With four soccer teams going, we’re in the midst of some serious playing time. Four or five nights a week we’re on the rec field. Sometimes we have game conflicts, but not often and there are enough family members to spread out and form a large cheering section. I am loud and positive during each game, affirming and encouraging every single attempt they make.

Older adopted children neither come with instruction manuals, nor good manners, and no on ever covered many of the socially polite bases that one might reasonably expect an 11 or 12 year old to understand.

Tonight my U12 sons, five of them ages 10 and 11, plus my 11 year old daughter went up against an undefeated team. They put on their A game and won, but I was unhappy over my best soccer playing son for trash-talking. All he said was, “Move it Sissy,” to one 11 year old guy who whined about it. My same son then called another boy, “Too Tall.”

The coach of the other team was furious with my son. I backed her up on it, well maybe not the level of her anger, but fundamentally she was right and he was wrong. This name calling is something we’re working on here, way too often a sentence is punctuated with ‘you idiot,’ which I find more than insulting. They use worse words too, not cuss words but politically incorrect and borderline offensive.

I almost wished Allen would get sidelined for a minute. He’s an amazing soccer player but that’s no excuse for staying in the game so unsportsmanlike. We had a talk in the van afterwards about it. I didn’t want to dilute their spectacular win, but I don’t want my kids known for being big mouths or poor sports.

In this small town, six of my kids are on one team, tight as ticks, aggressive and focused, they’re known as determined players, but I know that other coaches have noted their off nights. The obvious badly played nights when their personal issues overtake their playing abilities. These same middle class white men may not be able to pinpoint a traumatized child’s inner conflicts nor correctly label each rage; it’s difficult to attribute each deliberately missed play to an older adopted child’s inner toddler, but my kids wear their emotions on their jerseys and in their cleats.

One man commented tonight about Allen’s powerful kicks and Chuy’s focused drive, these men just have no idea what’s behind it all, what all we live with constantly, but soccer is my main attempt to funnel their aggressions and anger into literal goals.