Exploiting Injuries

I’ve recently observed virtually identical behavior in a couple of kids I wanted to comment on.

First, a girl in the boy’s martial arts class, probably 10 or 11. She’s a red belt in the class, a very high rank. Red is the last belt level prior to becoming an apprentice black. That means minimally, she has 3 years of effort invested in her training. As do her parents.

My observation is that she ends up sitting on the periphery of the class in almost every class I’ve seen her in lately. She’s usually got an ice pack and is nursing some sort of injury. Though some times she doesn’t even have the ice pack, at which point my guess is she told the instructors that she wasn’t feeling well.

As it happened, I was watching the class a couple days ago with a black belt who often volunteers to help teach the kid’s class. The girl in question had once again become injured and he made a comment that she’s always injured. Apparently, she no longer wants to pursue her black belt. Her parents, not unreasonably, have stuck to bringing her to the classes. Hoping that she’ll come around and choose to finish her training and achieve a black belt. The head instructors think that it’s only a matter of time before she is able to convince her parents to pull the plug.

Now the second observation. This one occurred yesterday at a coach pitch game I volunteered to help out with. One of the boys on the team was in the outfield. It was hot out in the sun, but hardly brutal. For my part, I was wearing a black T-shirt, a remnant from the lass’ coach pitch game earlier. Her team has black team T-shirts. The kids were wearing bright orange T-shirts.

Anyway, I overheard this kid complain that there was a bee flying around him. I didn’t catch it all, but one of the other coaches was compelled to tell give him the age-old wisdom to simply ignore the bee.

A couple minutes later, the kid wasn’t feeling well. He was complaining about shortness of breath. He ended up going to the dug out to sit down and relax, get some water and calm down.

When it was his team’s turn to bat, the choice was given to him if he felt up to batting. He did, and took his normal spot in the rotation, the 2nd or 3rd batter in the inning as I recall. He got a hit and got on base as a result. When the inning was over, he remained in the dugout rather than going out into the field with his teammates. He didn’t want to take a chance.

In both cases, I see a kid using the one trump card they have in their formidable arsenal to get what they want. The claim of injury or sickness. Nowadays, this is the one thing that a parent or teacher cannot mess with lest the child actually be telling the truth. I’ve noted on many an occasion that kids are clever critters. Particularly when they really want something, or to avoid something. Consider these further evidence of how far they will go.

My own tactic for dealing with these situations is to communicate to the kid that I know they are bluffing. I’ll typically ask them some misleading questions, basically putting them in a situation where they are clearly concocting a cover story. Once they are at that point, I’ll good-naturedly dismiss them, perhaps even mock or shame them a bit, and allow them to continue with their ruse. I’ve done this on numerous occasions with the boy and the lass. If they choose to resume participation, then everyone’s a winner.

If not, well, at least they know they haven’t gotten away with it cleanly.