I came *this close* to becoming one of those obnoxious parents (a mini-rant)

You should be more embarrassed that your kids are Cub Scouts.

 

My what a lot of fish there are.

 

That's the other thing. The head Scout leader is actually very nice, and has been very helpful to us through the years dealing with our special needs kids. I think my wife was just figuring that she botched one here, and didn't want to make a fuss. I kinda see her point with it. It's like an umpire in baseball. She's made a lot of good calls, but to me, she blew one here. She's human, and it happens.

Luckily, my youngest seems like he's mostly forgotten about it now. If he had the trophy, he'd be carrying it around proudly for a couple of days, and it would have been sitting nicely in his room after that.

Luckily though, it wasn't my Asperger's son who got screwed. He wouldn't have taken it quite as well. He actually had a small crying fit in the car because he didn't catch any fish at all. And I don't know if my reaction to the screwjob would have been quite as mild.

 

this.

you handled it exactly right. any parent would be disappointed/upset that their child was the only one not to get it. but they know charity when they see it. 'trophies earned' beat 'trophies entitled' every time. and at this age, in an activity so minor, they move on as soon as their uniforms are off.

 

Nah it's not the other kid's fault. Clearly the remedy would be a flaming bag of poo on the scout leader's doorstep.

 

i'd also imagine exception are made for children with such 'issues.' no rules should ever be hard and fast.

 

I'm guessing probably not. He still would have been doing the same thing he's doing right now. Ten years of covering Little League tournaments in the summer taught me that parents always take these kinds of things with more pride and disappointment than kids do. Kids are more concerned with what's the next fun thing they're going to do, not with what either did or didn't go their way 3 hours ago. Kids don't worry about the big picture, they worry about the here and now. We should all be so lucky to live that way.

But not making a scene and not saying anything to the scout leader was the right way to go. Like others have said, I'm sick of everyone has to get a trophy and everything kids do has to involve trophies. Kids need to learn that it's OK to lose sometimes. It's not OK to be OK with losing, but it's OK if someone is either just better than you one day, or you're not performing at your best that day. I don't know why, we, as adults, feel that kids have to win at everything they do.

 

As someone with AS, I can tell you that learning how to lose, that the same rules apply to you that apply to everyone else and that sometimes life just ain't fair are three of the most important things you can learn as a kid.

Because AS kids are very concrete, a lot of them believe that if you play by the rules, you will succeed/win. Sadly, life doesn't work like that. I trashed many a board game in my day because I lost (and once pitched a giant temper tantrum at Disney because the scavenger hunt prize wasn't precisely where the clue said it would be - it was nearby and someone else found it and my elementary-school self had a most major cow). But the older I got and the more I experienced that, the more I learned the "rules" of dealing with a situation like that. Now, as an adult, I can almost always deal with situations like that in a socially acceptable way even though my first reaction is to still freak out. It seems a little cruel at the time, but it's really best for the long run with a kid who you want to be an independent adult one day.

Your wife did the right thing here. Sometimes people with the best of intentions do something that is "unfair" to you, and as long as it's done by someone who means well and the consequence is something small like this, there's no point in making a big deal out of it. That's the lesson your kid will take from it.

 

I remember at age 10 or so being livid that we got trophies after finishing fourth in Little League (out of eight or 10 teams).

It meant nothing.

Today, I'd bet that 10th place team gets trophies and most of the kids/parents think they deserve them.

My oldest started playing football this year and I was ecstatic that they keep score. Most of the other parents were outraged.

 

Rocky loses at the end of the movie.
He's still the hero.

 

Capt. Quint wants to know where his trophy is.

 

Oh, and umpires don't ever blow calls.

I call a lot of USSSA ball, and they give out RINGS for winning a weekend tournament. RINGS. For winning like four games. I just don't get it.

But the director makes 450 a team, so he doesn't care.