My son's coach is an asshole.

My bet is if we got to question the coach he would have a different story to tell.

He could be a lying puke, but if you like his kid the chances are he's not been so bad a Dad.

Take a broader view of this matter.

What are you asking us for? You clearly feel you should say something. Mo is fine with it, and is ready to leave the coach's team. So, trust yourself and go talk to the coach! You might even throw in something like, "I'm considering pulling my son from your team over this". This way, because Mo's eventual departure would be on you, the coach can't frame him as a quitter, and Mo's friendship with his son would be less likely impaired. I'm all for it.

Can you give an example of the type of things the coach is saying/doing? Maybe that would help us get a better handle on the situation.

Yay! Thank you. It is heinous. I have never seen an adult behave in this way.

Mr. B agrees that it's heinous. We have discussed pulling Mo from the team and we agree that we will do that if necessary.

Mr. B just doesn't want me to rock the boat. He knows that I'm really, really good at boat rocking.

I say go rock, girl!

Yes he needs to deal with the fact that people can be jerks, including adults which as he grows will be the same as people in power, and it's unlikely that he will have Mom to shield him for the rest of his life.

I'm sure I'm not the only man in this forum who took **** at one time or another from an adult when they were a kid, and for many of us it was from jackass coaches. Having Mommy intercede never works in the way Mommy thinks it will.

I'm also sure none of us enjoyed the experience, but I am sure we all learned from it. Not all coaches are assholes.

Oh no?

Sounds like you haven't had an experience like this.

If the coach is as big an asshole as boomerang thinks he is, he will not only frame her son as a quitter but as a Momma's Boy Quitter.

Her intutition may be right, but it won't be as consequence free as you suggest.

"Heinous?"

Butterfly is right, we need more information before we can accept that his conduct rises to "heinous."

What is he actually saying or doing?

Right now all we have is the sense that he is being insensitive and snarky about the death of your son's pet. Sorry, but there are a whole lot more heinous things a coach can do.

There is no other story to tell.

(This addresses Butrflynet's post further down too)

Let's pretend (I've learned not to be too specific on A2K anymore) that Mo's wombat fell into the garbage disposal.

The coach is saying things like "If you don't ________ I'll put your wombat down the garbage disposal!"

There is no broader view.

Well Mr. B isn't fine with it and he's usually the voice of reason. He knows that I enjoy confrontations and he can usually talk me down.

But that is what I was planning on saying -- "I'm thinking about pulling Mo from the team if this doesn't stop. It's upsetting to him and to me and I think your comments are uncalled for and unnecessarily cruel. Does it stop or do we go?"

I don't understand why anyone takes **** from anyone.

I know not all coaches are assholes. I never said all coaches are assholes. Most coaches are great. This guy is a great coach but he's behaving like an asshole.

That's definitely crossing the line.

Now you need to decide if it is worth going against Mr. B's wishes and talking with the coach or just go ahead and remove Mo from the game and either do or don't tell the coach why.

Are there other teams available for Mo to play on?

Who cares what an asshole thinks?

Not me.

There are lots of other teams that would be happy to have my son on them. He wanted to be on this team because of his friend. We aren't married to them.

Why isn't he fine with it? What does he think the problem would be? "Rocking the boat" is a little abstract. What concrete harm does he worry about?


Sounds good to me.

It is crossing the line.

There are lots of teams that would be happy to have Mo.

I think that is your answer.

You say you don't want to create problems between your two families because of the friendship between the boys.

Which would have less of an impact on that family friendship, telling the coach why you are removing Mo from the team, or just removing Mo as soon as he's accepted on another team?

Also, if Mo is playing on another team, will this coach still have opportunities at games to continue with the snarky comments to Mo?

I don't know. We haven't had a chance to talk about it without Mo around.

He is fine with Mo moving to a different team though.

I'm thinking that maybe he doesn't want to make waves with Mo's friend's family. We really do like this kid. He's at our house all the time.

Also, Mr. B helped build this league so he has some time invested in it. He has an interest (not a financial interest -- it's all non-profit) in seeing the league do well even if Mo isn't involved in it. This is Mo's first year to be able to play in it and we were all looking forward to it.

The least impact would come from me speaking privately to the coach and getting him to stop.

If Mo left this team he'd be on a different league so the coach couldn't use this during games. He could, of course, still use it when he saw Mo hanging out with his son.

Honestly, I just don't understand this kind of behavior in adults. I'm baffled.

Why does he feel the need to make these kind of threats to Mo? What is he trying to get Mo to do that requires such a heavy-handed comment to Mo?

I don't know. I wasn't at practice today. I just know Mo came home really upset.

He'd been at Friend's house over the weekend and the same sort of thing happened and Mo just left. That didn't have anything to do with coaching. Now he's just doing it very publicly.

I think he's just being an asshole.

I am trying to understand why anyone would say such a thing and I just can't wrap my head around it.