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.

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!

In one of the largest, longest and most drawn-out campaigns of all time, the U.S. Bid Committee for a bid to host the FIFA World Cup in 2018 or 2022 has named 18 host cities.

Charlotte is not included. Neither are Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit, Jacksonville, Oakland, Orlando, St. Louis and San Francisco. But since our youngest will be out of college by time the games get here, I guess Mr. Watson and I can travel to Nashville or Atlanta to catch some of the action!

The next level of competition is to determine which of the 18 cities will host the finals, etc. Catch the action at The Game Is In Us (get it? Us=U.S.) and sign the petition to bring the games back to the U.S.

If you care to donate to this cause, by the way, the bumper stickers are quite cool. (I grabbed a few free ones at a tournament in November).

Comment below: where will YOU be in 2018 or 2022? And did your city make the cut?

Congratulations on Melanie’s fabulous success so far in the U.S. Open! I’m typing this an hour before her next appearance, and I wish her and your family well. This must so exciting for all of you!

Although none of the Watson children have picked up a tennis racquet in at least nine years, I, along with hundreds of soccer moms in the USYS Region III (which encompasses your hometown of Marietta, GA) can relate to your hotel woes.

Seriously. It is so difficult to know for how long to reserve hotels at sudden-death tournaments, and how to buy return airline tickets for such trips. Last December we had a 3:00 p.m. semifinal game, for example, with a 6:00 p.m. hotel cancellation deadline. Our suitcases were all packed and inside our cars–we’d checked-out by noon, of course–but we were poised to return under new reservations once/if we won the game. (Luckily for us, the rates were the same for all of those nights.)

Our game started late (due to overtimes and injuries in preceding games) and it got pretty tense around 5:35 or so – all 14 of us moms were locking the hotel number into our cellphones and getting ready to call and cancel if needed once/if the final shootout didn’t go our way. Needless to say, it was hard to enjoy the game itself under such pressure.

I don’t know why I’m telling you this, except to say that I feel your pain. We try to minimize distractions and aggravations for our kids when they are competing, especially at high levels, but sometimes you can’t do much about it.

On the bright side, I guess, it’s a terrific problem to have when your advancement exceeds your hotel reservations!!