Instead of sitting here stewing I am going to get these thoughts out of my mind.  I cannot stand this time of year.  Not only is it cold but it is when my husband turns into Mr. Ultimate Sports Freak.  Anyone who has read this blog for some time has heard my complaints before.  Not only is it football season but also basketball season.  With that my husband has 2 professional football teams he follows.  Then there are the teams that play other teams that the outcome of their game effects "his" teams so he must follow those as well.  Then there are 2 college football teams that are also a must on his list.  There is 1 college basketball team and then there is the coaching of AJ's basketball team.  Unfortunately the coaching of AJ's team is the one that gets under my skin the most.  Don't get me wrong...my husband is a wonderful coach.  He knows his stuff and is absolutely excellent with kids.  I get compliments all the time from the parents on how much they like my husband being the coach.  I am very proud of him.  However with that my husband totally changes when he is "coach".  You would think that my husband has a multi million dollar prize at stake at the end of the season if his team wins.  He spends hours working on plays, line ups, and whatever else he does to prepare for the games.

 My husband thinks the whole entire world revolves around sports.  If "his" team (professionally or his basketball team) looses he acts as if we took a million dollar financial hit.  He sulks and tells me all the things that could have been done differently in order to win.  I am so not competitive in the least bit so "winning" means nothing to me.   Case in point, Mike plays their first playoff game tonight.  If they win that will be great but if they loose I still think it was an honor to make it this far and we will continue on with life tomorrow as we did today.  However, if they win my husband will be planning strategies for their next game (even though he is not a coach on Mike's team) and will be trying to figure out how they can win.  If they loose......my husband will complain the whole ride home about how the coaches didn't have the right people in, didn't make the right calls, how the umpires ripped the team off etc. 

But that is still not it.  My husband has raised Mike by the words "football, football, football."  Mike does have a love for the game and plays pretty good.  He is by far the most muscular guy on the team.  Mike has always said he wanted to play professional football as an adult.  And even more so my husband wanted him to play college and professionally.  When I first met my husband he spent 99% of his time talking to Mike about football.  We had been dating for a while and I noticed my husbands boys never had any homework at his house.  I asked my husband if he thought it was odd that they never had any homework.  He said that he asked them and they said they didn't have any.  DUH???  Every kid is going to have that response.   Soon after I got my husband very involved with his kids school, teachers, and grades.  We found out that none of them were at the top of the charts.  We began slowly getting them to turn their grades around but they all 3 struggle with not turning in assignments.  AJ had never even read one book from cover to cover.  We have improved alot with them but still have a way to go.  It is hard when the boys do not live with us to make a difference especially when their mother is not on the same page as us but we do our best.  The main thing we do is have the boys read, we stay in contact with the teachers about missing assignments, upcoming tests etc.  We have really focused on Mike because he needs to start applying for colleges after the first of the year.  My husband so wanted Mike to get a football scholarship.  While his ability to play football it there his grades are not.  We recently found out that Mike is ranked #116 out of 170 students in his senior class.  That means there are only 54 students with WORSE grades than he has.  I also added up the points for all the assignments he did not turn in for all of his classes and he is missing 557 points for lack of effort.  But my husband still screams football! football! football!  Mike cannot get into a college in his current standing much less play football.  The sad thing is if Mike does not go to college he has to get a job come May.  What is this boy going to do for a job with only a high school education?  How is he going to raise a family one day?  Yes, I know people do it but they have to struggle.  This kid is so smart and is wasting it away.  And no one is beating down our door to get him to come play football for them.  It is very frustrating.

So....leads me up to the point of my madness.  Son #2 is showing the same signs as his older brother.  AJ is not turning in assignments.  Most of the work he does is with half effort.  He just wants to get the assignment done and doesn't care if he does it right or not.  Studying.........is something AJ puts zero effort into.  He has pretty much failed every test he has taken this year.  We spoke with the teachers and they said they do a study guide for each class for each test a few days prior to the test.  They also tell the students to take them home and study before the test.  Like all AJ's missing assignments, when we ask where is his studying guide is he replies "I think it is in my locker."   On a daily basis we have to email teachers to see what assignments AJ and Brock are missing.  We then have to have the teacher get the boys the assignments, go pick the boys up to make sure they complete them, take them home and then email the teacher the following day to make sure they were turned in.   At Parent Teacher conferences all of AJ's teachers told us that he has a lack of focus in class.  In fact he has had to be moved to an area all by himself in each class in the teachers effort to try to make him pay attention.  He is in 7th grade........he should have got over this in 4th grade!  His brother that has ADHD doesn't even have this problem.  So on a daily basis AJ never knows what homework was assigned or how to do it since he did not pay attention.  So my husband graciously took on task of emailing the teacher, searching the internet to figure out how to do the work and assists AJ in completing his assignments.  I was helping at one point but while I was trying to figure it out my husband allowed AJ to go outside and play basketball.  It is AJ's responsibility to be respectful to his teacher, listen in class, do his work on time and turn it in.  I am not going to spend my evening trying to figure out what was taught and how to do it while he is out playing basketball.  So my husband does it.  And many times I am sure my husband is doing the assignment as well.  So after Parent Teacher conferences we told AJ that if he did not have a studying guide at home with him the night before a test he would have to have a consequence.  The first test afterwards he did not bring home his study guide so my husband took away his PC privledges.  The second test my husband made him write sentences backwards.  So last night AJ was to bring home a study guide for a Science test today.  He did not bring it home.  He had basketball practice later that evening and I told my husband that I wanted him to sit out the practice for not bringing it home.  Of course my husbands reply was..."I can't do that."  His reasoning is he doesn't want to embarass AJ nor does he want to punish the team for AJ's lack of academics.  What is he thinking?  If AJ plays in school the school will certainly sit him out for his lack of academics.  But in my husbands mind it is all about sports and nothing else.  He then went on to tell me that there are ways around getting a student to play if they are benched for academic purposes.  Yes, I think my husband has plain lost it.  I am NOT going to raise our kids this way.  You don't teach them to find ways around rules. 

My husband complains about all the work he has to do in order to keep in touch with teachers about missing assignments and tests for the boys.  He said it is wearing him out.  I told him he needs to put the responsibility on the boys and that his job is to hold them accountable.  He said he can't expect them to remember things at their age.......yes he says the same thing about our 17 year old, that if he doesn't go to college needs to become a responsible adult in 5 months.   My husband is also saying to me that he wishes the boys would be more like Hylari.  I told him how I do not let it be an option for Hylari to not turn in assignments, it is not an option to not study for tests, and it is not an option to not read at least 30 minutes a day.  That is why she has straight A's.   I also pointed out to him a few weekends ago on a Sunday how Hylari spent 3 hours working on a project for school.  During that same time AJ, who had 3 missing assignments at the time and didn't bother bringing any of them home, was outside shooting baskets and Brock, who at the time had F's in all his core classes, was playing video games all the while my husband was camped out on the sofa watching "his" teams play football.  I had told him that AJ should have been made to do "something" to get the point across to not leave his school work at school and Brock should have gone over papers that he missed so many on so that he learned the assignments.  I was tied up helping Hylari and my husband said he didn't want the boys to be "bored".  The real excuse was he wanted to watch football and since I was busy he didn't want to have to take himself away from the game.

Now today he is angry because Brock turned in a paper LATE and the teacher took off points for it being late.  It is beyond me in my husbands reasonings.  If a paper is late the teacher is going to take off points for it being late in order to get the students to turn them in on time.  My husband thinks they should still get full credit.  I do not understand how he thinks we are going to raise responsible men when he thinks they should focus their attention on sports and not education and abide by the rules.   He wants me to be supportive of him but I cannot support sports! sports! sports! and very little educaton.  It is not our responsibility to do all the work we are doing in order to make sure the boys are staying on top of their school work.