Following a post I wrote a few weeks ago, I am writing the lessons that I would like for my future child to learn.  This is an exercise from a book I am reading, Changing the Game.  This list is not perfect, but here are some of the lessons that I wrote down as part of my exercise:

Struggle – I would like for my child to struggle.  And to overcome the struggle in sports, where the stakes are not nearly as high as in other aspects of life.  I do not want everything to come easy to my child.  He will learn from overcoming struggles and failures, and keep moving forward.  I want to prepare my child for the road, not prepare the road for my child.

Hard work pays off – I would like for my child to learn that the harder she works to prepare for something, the more “luck” she will have.  I put luck in quotes, because it is not luck.  She will put herself in position to have more opportunities for success.

No limit to what you can achieve – I would like for my child to learn that he can always push himself harder.  He can always get better.  I do not want him to settle in life.  I want him to keep attempting to attain something higher.

Lead – I would like for my child to learn to lead.  I would like for her to believe in herself and lead by example.  I would like for her to learn to pick others up when they are doubting themselves or “the team.”  My child will be faced with adversity in life.  That adversity may deal with relationships, with family, or with the workplace.  I would like for my child to be equipped to lead her family (or her coworkers or her employees) through hard times.

Humility – I would like for my child to learn to be humble.  I would like for my child to learn to handle individual success with humility.  I would like for them to find success and learn how not to brag and not to show off.  I would like for them to learn to share their individual success with others.

Teamwork – I would like for my child to learn to be part of a team.  I would like for him to have team goals.  I would like him to work together with others to achieve something.  I would like for my child to learn that you can accomplish more with others than you can on your own.

Independent thinking – I would like for my child to develop into an independent thinker.  I would like for him to learn to take ownership of his actions.  And for him to understand that he is responsible for his actions.  He should feel the pressure and gravity of the situation and understand that the outcomes depend on his actions.  I would like for him to learn to focus in these situations, as he will be faced with many pressure or stressful situations in his life, and he will need to think for himself.

Self-worth – I would like for my child to learn that her self-worth is innate.  Her success can only be judged by her, not by her coaches, her parents or her peers.  Their opinions do not matter.  All that matters is her own opinion of herself.  And she has to recognize that she has value, regardless of what anyone else in life tells her.  I want her to be self-confident and believe in herself at all times.

Friendship – I would like for my child to learn to be a friend.  Relationships are so important in life.  And sports teams are great opportunities for children to learn to make and develop deep relationships with others.

Joy – I would like for my child to learn to find the joy in what she is doing.

I ran the race yesterday with Liz and Bear.  Well, it is most accurate to say that I started the race with Liz and Bear.  Liz started at a blistering pace of roughly 8 minute miles.  I kept up for the first three miles, and then couldn’t keep pace.  I fell behind.

I saw them at around 5 miles in, but then did not see them again the rest of the race.  While running is a solitary sport, I do enjoy running with others more than by myself.  I was very disappointed in myself that I did not keep up, and that I did not push myself harder.  I do believe that I could have and should have run harder.

But, my own struggles only give me a deeper appreciation for Elizabeth’s determination.  She continues to amaze and impress me with her determination when faced with a challenge.  I am very proud of her.

I am reading Changing the Game. In this book, one of the exercises is to envision your future child. The goal is to envision the values and the lessons that you want your child to develop as they mature into an adult. And, with this vision, it should become clearer for the parent to map out how to help their child achieve that vision. As part of this exercise, the book asks you to List the core values that you want your child to possess as an adult. I thought this would be an easy exercise. I penned Honesty and Integrity without blinking. And my mind started flowing for a while. This is a great exercise, and got me to really think about not only what my values are, but what I hope my children possess as values when they are adults.

My list is not perfect of course, and may be different than the values that my children, as they develop as independent thinkers, may choose for themselves. But here is the imperfect list that I came up with today:

• Honesty
• Integrity
• Humility
• Industriousness
• Empathy
• Self-confidence
• Selflessness
• Enthusiasm
• Determination
• Love

Honesty – Above all, I want my children to value honesty.  I want them to be true to themselves and to others.  If they are honest with their thoughts, and strive to be honest with their actions, their conscience will guide them through difficult decisions when they need to make courageous and unpopular choices.

Integrity – Integrity is how you act when you think no one is looking.  I want my children to know that it doesn’t matter who is looking.  For they will always know what they have done.  It does not matter to me what reputation my children possess.  Reputation is what others perceive you to be.  Character is who you are.  And I would like for my children to be men or women of integrity.

Humility – My grandfather was fond of the poem, ‘Gunga Din’.  Gunga Din was a water boy in the war.  A humble man.  I never want my children to think they are less than anyone else.  But I also want them never to believe that anyone else is better than them.  John Wooden had a phrase, “You’re no better than anybody else; and nobody is better than you”.  A humble person may achieve greatness, but will never make someone else feel lesser by how he acts about his achievements.

Industriousness – There is no substitute for hard work.  It is one of the cornerstones of John Wooden’s Pyramid of Success.  Everything worthwhile is difficult.  I hope for my children that they grow with an understanding of hard work.  And an understanding that they will not achieve success unless they are willing to work for it.  And that lesson applies to everything in life – their career, their marriage, their family, their athletic achievements, and their legacy.

Empathy – I want for my children to grow to be caring adults.  I want them to place great importance on the needs of others.  I want for them to understand others’ perspectives, their plights, their beliefs, and their values.  In this understanding, they will act out of empathy.  They will be able to put themselves in others’ positions, and not pass judgment.

Self-confidence – I want my children to grow into great adults.  I want them to have confidence in themselves.  I want them to trust in their beliefs.  I want them to trust their feelings.  I want them to stand up for their self-worth.  And I want them to use this inner strength and courage to stand up when they believe they should.

Selflessness – I want my children to put the needs of their spouses and their children above their own needs.  I think they will truly find joy if they give what they have in service to others.  It comes back in joy tenfold, but that is not the motivation, and won’t be the motivation of my children.

Enthusiasm – I want my children to love life.  I want them to have the courage to follow their dreams.  To have initiative, and love what they are doing.  Enthusiasm is infectious, and they will develop great leadership qualities if they learn to love their life.

Determination – I want my children to become adults that strive for greatness.  I want them to have goals.  And I want them to understand that there will be many obstacles.  They will need determination in order to overcome the many roadblocks in their path.  So many of our dreams seem impossible, then improbable, then inevitable.  –Christopher Reeve   Dreams will remain just that unless you are determined to make them come true.

Love – Above all else, I want my children to be adults who love.

A bell is not a bell until you ring it.
A song is not a song until you sing it.
Love in your heart wasn’t put there to stay;
Love isn’t love until you give it away!

I have made my imperfect list.  I am recording it because I will probably reflect on this later in life and realize that my values have changed.  Or maybe I will reflect and be reminded that I have strayed from the values that I hold dear.  Or maybe one day I will share this list with my children, and will have helped them to grow and believe in these same values.  At any rate, I am grateful to have had the time to reflect on these values and to pen them.

I was able to catch the last few minutes of Elizabeth’s game, and then the entirety of Eden’s game on Tuesday.  It was fun to watch.  Both teams played against Park.  And a handful of girls from the A team stuck around after their game to watch the B team play.  I love the school spirit and sense of pride that I am seeing in the girls with their school.  And the parents of the girls from the A team were into the B team’s game as well.  It is refreshing to see this pride in school.  I am happy to be a part of it.

Eden is a 5th grader on the middle school team.  The team is made up of 5th, 6th and 7th graders.

Her coach is putting a lot of confidence in Eden, as I noticed Eden takes a lot of the free hits, inserts, and also is the ‘fly’.  The fly is the defensive player that challenges the ball when the opposing team has a penalty corner.  Eden is the smallest player on the team.  She played pretty well.  As a critical parent, I think she could have hustled more, and think she hustled more in their first game.  But, I love watching her play.  And I made sure to tell her so after the game.

In the final minute or two of play, they were down by a goal.  Eden took a penalty corner.  After she inserted, the ball came back to her.  She dribbled towards the goal, shot, and scored.  It was very exciting!  It was the team’s first goal of the season, and Eden’s first goal as a Gator.  Very cool stuff, and I am glad that Eden got to enjoy the feeling!

I watched this morning a Ted Talk by Joe Ehrmann, entitled, “How to be a man.”  The message was simple.  It was about rewiring the meaning of the phrase, “Be a Man.”  Joe preaches that masculinity should be defined in terms of relationships and commitment to a cause.

I have read Mr. Ehrmann’s book, InSide Out Coaching, and it helped me to formulate and refine my own coaching philosophy and approaches to coaching. I have counted Joe Ehrmann amongst the coaches that I have learned a great deal from over the years.  I have been most impressed with Mike Krzyzewski, John Wooden, and Joe Ehrmann.  They have gotten to the essence of coaching and leading.  And they demonstrate the importance of qualities like trust, communication, collective responsibility, loyalty, caring, industriousness, and enthusiasm.  They talk about leading with the heart and exercising judgment rather than setting and following rules.  I admire most about Joe Ehrmann and his book is that he provides a skeleton of a blueprint for being a coach, which is to say that he tells the audience to reflect on their past experiences in order to develop a coaching philosophy of their own.

It is the self-reflection and character-building traits that draw me to these three men.  It is especially the character-building and the lessons that we can impart to our players and our children.  There are several causes to be committed to in life.  For me, I have felt compelled to coaching over the last few years.  And the burning reason for this calling is the ability to impart wisdom, to build character, to help others develop self-esteem and self-confidence, and to be a positive role model.  In short, I am called to make a difference, to make my mark.  And I believe the best way for me to do so is through teaching.

Grandpop and Aunt Mary

I look up to my father, and I look up to my grandfather.  I think they both are profound examples in my life.  I often reflect on my grandfather.  He was, of course, a man.  And I am certain that he had faults.  I don’t want to idolize him.  But I have certainly put him on a pedestal.  I do believe he was great.  When Joe Ehrmann spoke of deathbeds in his Ted Talk, I thought about my grandfather, and his funeral.  I thought about the hundreds of cars in the procession, and of the many people that introduced themselves to me and talked about the profound impact my grandfather had on their lives.  He was a man for others.  I find him to be the model of a man, and I am grateful to have known someone who I can always compare myself to, and strive towards.  And I am happy to hear Joe Ehrmann’s talk about being a man, and that it is consistent with the way in which I believe my grandfather lived and the lessons he imparted to his children, and to so many children that were educated by him at Loyola Blakefield.

My father, 2005 at the Gait Cup

I know that my father strives to be like his father as well.  And he has helped so many people in his lifetime.  He has done so to a fault to himself and to my mom.  He has worked tirelessly over the years helping kids, helping the community, providing people hope; I don’t want to recount all of his efforts, but they are many – varied and vast.  And I know about a lot of them, and what motivates my father.  He is another model of a man.  He has chosen a different path than his father, but not so different.  He is a coach, which is very much akin to a teacher.

I have 3 sons.  3 sons that I want to remain sensitive.  I want them to have empathy and express their feelings.  I want them to think about how their actions affect others.  I want them to understand love.  And I want them to treat others with the respect that they want for themselves.  And so I want the message that Joe Ehrmann preaches to be heard loud and clear.  And I hope he is a catalyst for change.  At the very least, he is a catalyst for change in me, and he provides me with another blueprint that I can use to structure my lessons with my children: masculinity is about relationships and commitment to a cause.

Thank you, Mr. Ehrmann, for the wonderful talk.  I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Marcia and I attended the One Love Foundation fundraising event last night at the B&O Railroad Museum.  Our lacrosse club was one of the event’s sponsors.  It was a great event to raise money and awareness for an important cause.  I am a father of 6 children.  I am a father of 3 girls.  This foundation will raise awareness over time of relationship violence.  I try to teach my daughters how they should expect to be treated, what is right and what is wrong.  I am glad for this foundation and the strong women involved.  And I will look for ways in the future to support the cause.

They threw an elegant event last night at the B&O Museum.  Being inside the building, I had vivid memories of being there in my youth, but I cannot remember the occasion.  I will have to find out from my mother why I was ever there in my youth, but I am certain that I was there.

My new nickname, thanks to Juicebox.4. How did I earn said nickname? Foolishly.

On Sunday, I was quickly rolling a second coat onto the walls of the living room before I had to go to coach a field hockey game. The room was a mess, and I could not maneuver the ladder amongst the toys and dirty laundry. So, I found myself standing instead on furniture. I broke the television stand under my weight, but I kept on going.

I was almost done. Marcia called. She was on her way home and told me I didn’t have time to paint. I climbed up on a kitchen chair, determined to finish the job, still on the phone. I was rolling near the window, last couple spots to finish up. All of a sudden, the chair spun beneath me.

I lost my balance, but gripped the phone and the paint roller, and braced for impact. My elbow went through a framed picture of the family, back against the painted wall, and then fell hard to the floor right on my back. I was surrounded by glass, and told Marcia I couldn’t talk, but to get home, and I handed the phone to Eden. She started screaming and I realized that my arm was just dripping blood into a puddle on the floor. Noah grabbed me a role of paper towels, and we called my dad for help, as I needed a ride to get stitches.

As I was keeping the kids from the glass and holding the paper towel to my arm, Noah calmly told me that he was going to get his shoes on so that he could clean up the glass. And he did exactly that. And he was calm amidst what could have been a storm.

Patient First. 8 stitches. The first stitches of my life (besides those related to surgeries). I was back to coaching that night, helping Marcia run the field hockey clinic. And haven’t taken a night off since. 4 days later, and no infection yet. Hasn’t completely stopped bleeding and pussing. But it should heal completely in the next few days, and I know Marcia is itching to remove the stitches.

Hard to believe that these are my first injury-related stitches, and I am 37 years old.

Not to be confused with Katniss.  There is a beautiful little stray cat that has been hanging around our back porch the last few days.  The rest of the family has become attached to it very quickly.  Eden has named it Peanut, and she is especially attached.  And it appears to be attached to her and the sound of her voice.

At night, the cat hides on our roof, outside of my bedroom window.  Sometimes, it hides on the roof of the garage.  But when Eden says, “Here Kitty Kitty”, it appears immediately at the back door.  Eden has been feeding it.  Marcia bought it a collar.  And the boys are telling me that they want to keep the kitten.  It is a very pretty animal, and appears to be rather docile.

Look what appeared at my back door

Tomorrow, Marcia is taking it to the vet. Truth be told, we can’t afford to keep hermit crabs as pets, let alone a cat. But, I am a bystander watching these little blue eyes capture my family. Who knows. One day, they may even capture me.

I have decided not to fight on this one. If the cat makes Marcia and the kids happy, I will welcome it into or lives.

On my recent trip to Canada, I spent many hours on the Queen Elizabeth’s Way, or QEW, for short.  It is a long highway, stretching throughout Ontario, and part of many of our day trips through Canada.  On the QEW, there are several interchanges, sections of the road where the highway expands to 6 or 8 lanes, and then quickly back to 3 or 4 with 2 lanes exiting.  Exits come up pretty quickly, and it is easy to miss your exit and just keep going.  Chances are, you can still arrive at your destination, it just may take longer or be a lot more frustrating and hopeless.

I find myself recently at a crossroads, much like the many interchanges on the QEW.  Many paths to choose.  I can keep moving forward along the path I have been traveling for miles.  Or I can veer off to an exciting new highway, the 407.  The 407 is fast, it is a smooth ride with no traffic, and I enjoy driving it.  I am fulfilled when I drive this highway and reach my destination quickly.  But it is a strange toll road, and I don’t know if I will get in trouble because I don’t have Ontario license plates.  I know the QEW.  It may be filled with traffic, and my navigator may get frustrated because we will be late for our game.  But I know the path and where it leads.  Although the GPS is telling me I could save 13 minutes, I stay the course, and indecision takes over.  I plod along.

I have worked for years at a career.  And it has been very challenging and fruitful.  And I support my family.  But my current job is not treating me very well.  I am sitting in traffic.  There is traffic ahead and to either side.  I am intrigued by the many interchanges.  In this case, the GPS isn’t telling me what’s up.  It could be a dead end or take me in the wrong direction.  My navigator, my copilot, is holding my hand.  But she doesn’t know which way will get us there.  Already we are running late, and no money for gas.  But she trusts me.  And she knows that I am smart and I can get us there.  I am a lucky man to have someone believe in me.

But what path to choose.  I have missed a couple interchanges.  I tried to get over, and in some cases, almost made it.  But boxed in so far.  I am coming up on another exit.  This could be it.  I put my blinker on, and I am going to make my move.  Wish me luck…

Eden and Liz now go to school together at St. Paul’s School for Girls.  I was wondering how they would get along.  Their personalities are rather different.  I have been astonished and so proud as a parent to watch them interact on the way to and from school.  They are becoming better friends and sisters than they ever have been in the past.  I am certain it won’t last forever, so I want to capture just how special it has been the first few weeks of school.

Elizabeth is so supportive of her little sister.  She helps her study on the way to school.  She drills her on Spanish words and phrases.  After Eden’s first field hockey tryout, Liz was very encouraging with her, telling her how well she did.  And they were talking about how they were helping each other out on the field during a knockout game.  Eden got really pissed at an 8th grader who said something nasty about Liz.

Some days when I arrive to pick them up, they don’t see me right away.  And I get to watch them laughing and playing in front of the school.  They hang around with each other and with each other’s friends.  Eden sometimes brings me a cup of cold water to the car when she gets in, because she thinks I might be thirsty.  We listen to ‘Smarter than Regan’ in the morning sometimes together.

When the girls were trying out for field hockey, Liz was encouraging Eden that she might make the A team.  It turns out they made the teams by grade.  And Liz was pretty upset because Eden is on the B team.  But nonetheless, they support each other.

The other day, we were running kind of late.  They were only going to have about 5 minutes to get to morning prayers.  Eden was very nervous because they usually have about 15 minutes.  Liz told her how to organize her stuff in the car so that she could run to her locker, drop the stuff that she didn’t need, and already have out separate the stuff she needed to take with her.  She helped Edie through it.

They talk about each other’s days and what they bought for lunch.  And they ask each other about their school work.  Eden tells Liz that she should run for class president.  There will be many times when these two will fight or be jealous of each other.  For the moment, I am witnessing loving, caring and supportive sisters.  I am proud of my little Gators.