What type of tribe are you creating?

I realize this morning as I watch TOM AND JERRY with my five year old
that I must leave and speak with the Thirteen Year old about his behavior
after this weekends football game.

He doesnt want to hear that he played well, when his team lost and I know
that I can not console his 13 year old hormones, or ego with anything that
even smells of mothering but I know that there is a lesson to be taught here
in setting boundaries of acceptable behavior.

I dont immediate respond as I want to finish :Parenting with Boundaries< a book I have been reading by Dr. John Townsend.

When it is ok to be disrectful to your parents? When you loose a football game
and your in a bad mood? Can we teach that all the feelings our children have are ok but it is how they respond to them that makes them who they are, and what is allowed as acceptable in OUR HOME ?

There will be LOTS of defeats, understandable. But what about your actual preformance, did it change much during the entire game just because the other
team scored in the last quarter of the game. Cant we still speak about the great play you made?

Here is the time to set boundaries with an OPEN HEART to his perdictament. For I have noticed where the lines of disrespect are crossed, its hard to return to the original starting point.

Its like once your child has seem a Pg-13 movie, there is no going back !

I realize that playing football, raising all these BOYS in NYC, I have a hunting tribe, WE MUST WIN, we must be great, we must compete against our classmates for that spot in high school, we must complete for the highest test scores, the best football positions, the most playing time,....the most loved in our house.

In hunting tribes they leave the old behind, and where will your advice be then ?

Yet, in gathering tribes, you are an elder, the holder of the wisdom, someone to
be respected and listened to.

Where do you want to be in ten years from now with your children? Set boundaries with love !