Yes, I'm one of THOSE parents....

My kids play sports. So I'm a sport's mom. I take my kids to practice, pick them up from practice, sometimes stay for the whole practice and cheer them on at their games, even if they are sometimes a 2 hour drive away (realistically sometimes I just can't make those ones). I make sure Ry has something to eat for either the bus ride there or the bus ride back or money if they are going to stop. We shop for special shoes, special pants and even special socks. So I'm invested in this. I'm IN. Therefore, I really want to see our boys win. Whether it's Ry's freshman team or Z's 5th grade team I want to see a win. I want to see them make those other boys suffer, just spank them up and down the court or the field. Ok, that's a little bit harsh, I actually feel bad if our boys win by too much.

So I sit on the sidelines or in the stands and I yell. Not at the boys, of course, but just yell in excitement, encouragement, etc. Like today, for instance, Z's team was playing basketball and seemed to have a hard time remembering to get UNDER the basket and to REBOUND. So a few of us were kind of yelling (i.e. reminding) at them to "help out!", "hands up!", "rebound, rebound!", "get your guy!". Now, I'm not for sure, but I think the few of us were the only ones yelling this stuff to our kids. Maybe we were just so loud that we couldn't hear the coaches from where they were sitting? Anyway, the other team just started out kind of spanking us but we were able to "rebound" in the 2nd half. The other coach was really taking it out on his kids. I didn't like that. But at the same time, I was kind of hoping that some of the kids would take an elbow to the gut and puke and have to be taken out of the game. Or maybe they'd fall and hurt their knee. Not permanently, of course. I'm not a barbarian! I just wanted out kids to win. We lost, 17-14, but it was a good 2nd half. Now if they could be an all quarters team instead of just a 2nd half team, maybe I could relax a little and not wish the other team bad luck. Until then, I'll be the one yelling, I mean encouraging, from the stands.