I live too far away to enter, so you won’t have to compete with me (LOL). Good luck and please post a comment on here if YOU ARE A WINNER!

Enter the contest here:     http://nowskip.to/soccer-mom-contest

It’s World Cup time and I write you from the frigid reaches of . . . South Africa? That’s right, it’s freezing here, literally (minus one Celsius as we sat in Ellis Park for Brazil v. North Korea). But JennyLee didn’t ask me to post a weather report, so where were we . . . ?

That’s right, how to watch the World Cup with your kid. I was lucky enough this year to take my son with me halfway round the world to see it in person, but what I’m learning will apply just as well if you and yours are catching the games on television. Here’s my tips in no particular order.

1) Have a rooting interest!!!

This is the most important thing to get your kids excited. No one wants to watch a game with an uninterested party. “I just want to see a good game” is an awful thing to say to a kid. Especially mine. If I don’t care, he doesn’t care. As I jumped up out of my seat with Brazil’s first goal against Ivory Coast the other night, he jumped just as high with his hands pumping into the air in excitement. I desperately wanted Brazil to win and so did he. Your enthusiasm is contagious.

2) Kids will not generally watch every second of a match. Learn to love that.

You can beg, plead, cajole, threaten, but if your child is anything like mine he will spend plenty of match time looking at Ronaldo lookalikes in ostrich costumes (seen at 2 matches so far) or girls from Wisconsin dressed as the Statue of Liberty (seen at U.S. v. Slovenia) or whatever shiny thing you have in your living room, AND MISSING THE GAME!!! It’s no big deal. Let them play with their Pokemon cards in front of the couch while you watch the match. They’ll look up to catch the replay if something good happens that gets you shouting and celebrating.

3) Get them a costume and some noisemakers.

My son has worn a Brazil-colored mohawk wig through half of South Africa. That goes for match days and rest days. He’s blowing his vuvuzuela like he was raised doing it. I can’t get it to make a sound. When he uses it, the thing sounds like an elephant. Add to that the soccer-themed construction hat (I’ve forgotten what South Africans call them), the whistles, the flag caps, the face paint and you’ve got an environment that seems created by small children. “Son, do you want to go watch soccer?” “Eh, I don’t know.” Compared that to, “Son, do you want to dress funny and go make a ton of noise”, “Of course, when do we leave.”

4) Teach them the songs.

Every team worth its jersey has supporter songs. That goes for clubs and national teams. If you support a team, you should know them. So should your kids. We support Barcelona, Brazil, and the USA in roughly that order. So we know the Barca anthem (in Catalan because otherwise you’re the only one there singing in English), the Vivao Brasil chant, and that Ole Ole tune that US supporters like so much. Kids like to yell and football songs are a perfect excuse to do it in public with like-minded individuals. Luis Fabiano scored twice last night and my son was jumping up and down in the middle of thousands of other folks chanting “Luis Faaaaa-biano, Luis Faaaaa-biano, Luis Faaaa-biano.” I’d bet it was his favorite part. Especially since he was still humming it this morning.

5) Write the scoring system down.

I don’t know how I learned the point system used in soccer tournaments. But I know it. Trying to convey that to my 9-year-old is not working out so well. Finally I resorted to writing down each group and drawing the brackets for the knock-out rounds. We roughly had it down. But now every South African is talking about goal differential and that’s started us down the road of how the World Cup breaks ties. I’m hoping to have it all sorted out for him by 2014, but writing the basics down helped a ton.

6) Have fun around the game.

We had a great time watching Brazil v. Ivory Coast last night. But if there hadn’t been a game involved we still would have had fun. We posed for funny pictures in front of Soccer City, we ate pies filled with Pepper Steak and Vegetable Curry (this after learning that pie doesn’t always mean sweets just a couple days earlier), we tried to walk behind every TV reporter who was doing a live shot. We just had a good time. You can do the same in your living room. If the game is on, make it special. Buy their favorite snack, get out their favorite beverage and a couple shot glasses and take an apple juice shot every time one of the British announcers says a shot was “ambitious.” Throw out all your inhibition and make it an event. They’ll love it whether your team wins, losses, or draws.

It was my turn to take Doyle and his friends to a water park this week. They all have annual passes, from either Santa or birthdays.

My Mom friends and I have decided that we’re not going to just drop the kids off this year, that one of us should be on the premises in case of emergency. Plus, since we can’t bring food and drink into the park, we can corral the boys and go to the parking lot and eat lunch from a cooler in the car.

Let me borrow an overused technique to describe our day:

Annual pass for Mom, including tax . . . . . . . . $64
Sunscreen from gift shop (I forgot ours). . . . . $12
Daily parking pass . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . $10
Bottled water (4, we shared) . . . . . . . . . . . . $11
Locker rental (for cellphones so Mom could swim) . $13
Drive-thru shakes on the way home . . . . . . . . $19

Watching the silliness of the parking lot food fight with the grapes I so carefully washed for Doyle’s lunch . . . Priceless

They had such a fun, silly time with the food fight, that I wondered if we couldn’t have saved a hundred dollars and just cleaned out my refrigerator by throwing the contents around my back yard?

Do you have boy on the leading edge of childhood? Share your story in the comments section!

We had a problem in our Classic I league a few years ago where refs were threatening to not work and clubs couldn’t get parents to volunteer as field marshalls, it was so bad. They instituted a “Silent Saturday” which seemed to work — at least the most offensive parents placed themselves far away from the sidelines, like in the trees, up on hills or in their cars (maybe with binoculars).

What’s an embarrassed Team Mom* to do?

Serve them Tootsie Pops!

A savvy Team Mom brought along a supply of Tootsie pops, which she gently and wordlessly handed to any parents who started to get verbal. It worked and the pops became a staple at our games from then on.

$$$ Fundraising idea $$$ stock your concession stand with Tootsie Pops, and make sure all team managers are aware of the availability. Delight the siblings who are dragged to the games and provide a handy “disciplinary tool” for unruly adults!

* or frustrated Ref Assignor, or volunteer Field Marshall

There has been a lot of controversy about the new FIFA World Cup 2010 Official Match Ball, called the Jabulani.

Apparently each World Cup is an opportunity for the Adidas to experiment with materials and technology. The result is usually a faster ball, which becomes the gold standard, once players become used to it. But this year’s model has surprised elite players with trajectory issues. Strikers and midfielders are complaining along with the goalkeepers (who never like the new designs at first).

Don’t we hear similar complaints from swimmers at the Summer Olympics, where swimsuits get thinner and flimsier each time around?

That said, you and your kids will enjoy the video of the World Cup balls being produced at their factory. I am amazed at how many steps there are in the process – no wonder these World Cup 2010 match balls cost over one hundred dollars each!

However, this Wall Street Journal blog post “The Truth About Soccer Moms” speaks to me more than the New York Times article it reviews “Mom Becomes a Devoted Team Player”.

It’s a fun read which may have you nodding knowingly, agreeing with her descriptions of juggling work commitments to attend sporting events. (And you know I mean dashing off to drive to soccer practices, not to sit in the boss’s sky box at a Rangers hockey game, right?)

The author states that her memories are
“not the wins, or even the championships. You remember the trips together, the characters on your teams, the coaches, the laughs. My adult stepson and I had a heart-warming conversation a while back about [team memories] . . . Now a successful business owner, my stepson mused, ‘I’m glad somebody remembers I was once a hockey player.’ . . .”

I will disagree about not remembering the wins, at least where high school soccer is concerned. Six years later Mr. Watson and I still grit our teeth as we drive into the stadium parking lot at XYZ High. (They knocked our older son’s team out of the state playoffs in 2004)!

But maybe because select team rosters changed often after U-13 — AND the various clubs throughout our region merged or changed names and affiliations — my chief memories of select soccer are the tournaments, local and distant:

* playing in February monsoons at the Jefferson Cup
* taking voluntary bumping on the last flight out (and praying we’d make it in time for a noon start)
* a U-15 goalkeeper leaving his size 13 cleats in a hotel room an hour away from the Disney fields
* a macho Dad humbly accepting a speeding ticket with a van full of snickering U-14s.

Tell us about your favorite memories of soccer parenting. I’m laying odds that they did not happen ON the pitch!

Hmmm.  Ever tried it?

The pay is very nice:  teens can make $12 or $16 or more per game, depending upon the age group and whether it is rec or select level.  Most assignments  include 2 or more games in the same day, usually back-to-back.

There are start-up costs, and a wise parent will help their player budget how to pay for the licensing course and the ref shirt, shorts, socks and shoes. And whistle and flag kit, which includes the infamous red and yellow cards.

Generally an AR (assistant, or sideline ref) can work at any age level game, but the center ref needs to be at least two age levels above the teams playing. This is just common sense anyway.

If a ref is a current soccer player,  scheduling available times to ref can be challenging. This is aggravated by the inevitable make-up dates due to rain or snow or extreme heat.

Like any part-time teenager’s job, the parents will be inconvenienced by driving their ref-child to the fields and back home afterward.  Just goes with the job of parenting a teen, I guess.

Sherlock and Holmes each took the reffing classes when they were around 13 years old. Each bought their own gear (and LOVED flashing the red cards around the house to younger siblings) and were quite gung-ho about the bank accounts they would build.

And each quit after the first year.  Sherlock actually stopped accepting assignments after a half-dozen games.

Why?

Because of the obnoxious, know-it-all parents on the sidelines.  Each of my boys decided that it just wasn’t worth all the grief of being yelled at, or having their center ref yelled at, all through the game. Particularly by parents who probably did not understand soccer (beyond the fact that you have to “Boot it!!”).

Even Holmes, who enjoyed the self-challenge of going through the games without hearing the parents, hung up his whistle after a season.

So when you are at a game and the ref acts like s/he has never even PLAYED soccer before, that might be because real soccer players can’t be bothered with the abuse.

Yell responsibly.

Check out this post entitled “The Poverty of Running” by a young soccer Dad and coach named Chris Hall. He is part of the new breed of American soccer coaches . . . parents who have actually PLAYED the beautiful game!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iLvasbwj_Lc

His blog is fun to read and his insights are sometimes contrary to the norm, which can actually make you stop and think.

I’m glad to have found his website – check it out!