Ryan has spent the winter playing both street and ice hockey on separate teams. We debated whether the commitment would lead to over-scheduling but have mostly avoided conflict. The few times the schedules overlapped, we chose ice hockey, based on the logic that ice hockey costs a lot more. If we let Ryan choose, there […]
Read more "The Right Choice"Ryan and I have not played ball hockey in the backyard since our last series concluded more than a month ago. There are several reasons for that, weather and business travel among them. There’s also a larger plan at work. Ever since he began keeping statistics of the games and organizing them into best-of series […]
Read more "Motivation"Teaching Ryan to text and use a cell phone has been somewhat a work in progress. This year we got him a phone for school. We explained that kids his age communicate mostly by text message. That was enough to sway him — from complete indifference to mild interest — in owning a phone. I […]
Read more "The Best Text of All"I took Ryan to evaluations for his hockey house league program two weekends ago. I no longer fear these the way I once did. I watched Ryan do what he normally does. He followed instructions. He tried his best. He was close to the back of the pack in some of the skating drills. At […]
Read more "Progress: Of Body, and Mind"Repeating the same activities year after year stands as a convenient way to measure Ryan’s progress. Ryan has played in our town’s summer street-hockey league for five seasons, and he has come a remarkably long way in that time. His coördination, his social skills, his understanding of how to be a good teammate — all […]
Read more "Something Was Different"
Pucks and Puzzle Pieces 