Toughness

In some ways, my son is certainly not lucky to have me as a dad. As an athlete and former coach, he sometimes gets the 'benefit' of my critical analysis.

He's four. He probably doesn't need my critical analysis.

I have to be honest. I often question his toughness. I mean, he's four, so he probably is not required to actually be tough that often. But he doesn't always seem to quite- well, he gets back up after he falls down, but he still cries.

Again, he's four.

Still, on Sunday, he ran in a fun run and he ran almost the entire mile. He didn't fall down once and he took a lot of pride in what he did. He even was humble the next day, saying he didn't want to show the trophy off because people might not like him.

But I learned something about him later that afternoon. We were playing frisbee. He has no predictive ability- when you throw a frisbee it usually breaks and I was trying to basically place it in his hands so that he could catch it it. Like many four year olds catching is the act of slapping your hands together and hoping something ends up in between them. On one throw the frisbee broke, his hands closed late- and he got drilled in the mouth.

He started crying. He cried, he asked for his 'momma', who was at the store. I hugged him, he calmed down, and then we played for another ten minutes.

He kept saying, one more throw, one more throw. He wanted desperately to catch the frisbee and it took ten minutes, but we kept playing until he made that catch. Then we were done.

Maybe he's a lot tougher than I think...