The Intern Tries T-Ball, or

I probably shouldn't post this but maybe you can help me

When my son was diagnosed with autism, during the evaluation, the psychologist made a point to mention he didn’t believe my son would ever be able to participate in team sports. Said best I could hope is he potentially excels at something he could do solo, like swimming or tennis. At the time, I remember thinking a couple things: 1. What made him specifically mention that? Because I had a son and that’s a typical expectation? Or was it because I appeared athletic and was wearing my college lacrosse shirt? 2. Really dude? Of all the things racing through my mind right now as a parent, that wasn’t at the top of my list of concerns.

My husband was/is athletic. He still plays a lot of men’s competitive softball. I myself played a lot of sports growing up. I was a tomboy and my nickname in school was ‘Ambo’ (Amber + Bo for Bo Jackson, who played multiple sports and knew everything, according to commercials at the time. If you know, you know). But I didn’t find my true love until college: lacrosse. I will share my actual love affair with lacrosse in detail another time. For now, the short version is I loved every second I played in college. I was the goalie (aka crazy). Team captain. And after I graduated I got into coaching. I ran my own high school girls club team for 18 years.

When I was coaching, parents use to always ask me about coaching my own future child in lacrosse. I always found it awkward how often parents were talking to me about my future kids I was supposed to have. But I understood they had no idea what was going on in personal life or my capability of having children. But I told them honestly what I thought: I wouldn’t care if my son/daughter played lacrosse. I wouldn’t care what sport they played (except cheerleading. I admit cheerleading would be a hard thing for me to accept). Or even if they didn’t play sports at all. Whatever they would be passionate about, I would be too. If it meant learning to love theater (spoiler alert: I can’t stand musicals and can barely handle theater at all) or learn the scoring rules in tennis, or pretend golf is a sport, I would do it. Whatever my child wanted to do, I would be that mom with the huge foam finger, the sign, the button with their face, etc.

So let’s get back to my son and the evaluation of autism….