Reply to Sister says 14yo nephew not coming to my wedding because of his sports tournament. Thoughts?

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Reply to "Sister says 14yo nephew not coming to my wedding because of his sports tournament. Thoughts?"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I'm waiting for the parents of preschoolers/babies to infiltrate this thread with their outrage. 
Your sister is right.  Your nephew can't miss this tournament.  [/quote]

+1 and if my kids were preschoolers/babies/3rd graders, I would totally be on the flip side of this.  But now that I've got kids on team sports *and they are older* I do see the problem here as legitimate.

The key here is we are talking about a team sport.

When kids are little, missing a practice or game really no big deal.  But by the time they are 14, on a team sport, each kid has a position and there's various plays and they've all got their part in it.  The team depends on each kid--in clubs or travel teams, they are not fungible at 14 y.o.

So the kid might be penalized in the future for not showing up--because the coach recognizes that no matter how great his talent, the family cannot be depended on, therefore the kid can't be depended on to show up.  And it goes against all the band-of-brothers training and bonding.

And look, it's not like when tournament day was selected, the kid opted out and they worked around him--no, it was the bad luck of your sister to give you the green light about the bad date.  So by now the kid is probably a crucial part of the whole team working well.

I have to hand it to you--you are handling it well and assuming you are childless, you are handling it extraordinarily well.

So here's two stories that show decisions I would have never made:

I've got two DCs who are very good in a team sport.  The older DC had a string of bad breaks--was sick, got injured, then had some school conflicts, etc.  Over this past 4 day weekend we were going to visit cousins.  By that time she'd missed so much that I stayed home with her and let DH take my other DC.  I felt horrible but also felt to miss more would be to betray her team, not live up to her commitment to that team, leave the team weakened, and, sure, possibly ruin her chances on getting play time or being on the team in the future.

The second DC's story is that last spring, her team made it to the national finals in another state.  The kids and I had gone cross country to my hometown for the summer, and my DH flew out from WDC and took my DC back to meet her team to play.  It cost us a lot of money that we didn't want to spend, but we did it.  We originally weren't going to do it, but the team did not want to go unless our kid went; they said they'd never win without her.  Because, again, at this age, the kids are not fungible--it's not because my DC is a superstar; it's because of the way the individual team members work together.

All this and I'm still going to agree with the preschool moms (or moms of violinists and other solo activities) here and say, YES IT'S TOTALLY F'D UP.  But it is the system that is in place.  And look, normally you can work your life around it.  It was just that OP's sister made a mistake.[/quote]

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