Learning Something New: How to Play Football Lessons from John David

Today I have a guest post from my son. He’s eight, but he is a football expert.

John David can rattle off to you every single team in the NFL and who their quarterback is. He’s excited for the upcoming NFL draft to see who will go where.

JD also loves to play football, not just watch it. So he’s also anxiously tracking the start date for kid football season sign-ups.

We are in the middle of a move, so he had me look up when exactly football sign-ups are in the new town so he does not miss them. See, I have a long record of not knowing when football sign ups are, and I ALWAYS miss them.

I guess the easiest way to teach responsibility to your kids is to be accidentally super irresponsible yourself, because he took full responsibility for making sure he doesn’t miss it this time.

But I mean really. Football season starts in August. How would any mom, with no football background whatsoever, have any idea that you have to sign up in April for something that happens in August? In April I plan summer moves and vacations, but apparently I should have been planning football.

My son doesn’t just study football, watch football, and play football though. He is also my personal football coach.

That’s right. I try to play with him. You see, sometimes his brothers and dad aren’t around or don’t want to play, and then I get recruited.

This little guy has been teaching me all he knows about the sport of football. He asked me if he could write a post for my blog all about teaching his mom how to play football.

It’s all very full circle for me, as usually as parents we are the one teaching them. This has been so fun.

So without further ado, here is what he has to say.

Teaching Football to Your Mom, typed up by John David himself:

So when I teach Mom football, she is always afraid to catch the ball because she’s scared she’ll jam her fingers or get hurt. And sometimes we have this thing that has like a white hoop in the middle of a pitch back, and we would try to see how far we could throw and make it into the hoop. We would make a shot, then walk backwards, and then try to make it again. So it’s a whole repeated process to make the ball go in and repeat the same thing over and over again. Sometimes she made it in the hoop, which is impressive because she is still in lessons.

We would have a lot of fun, and today we still do that game. But we can’t right now because I’m sick, but when I’m not sick, we do that throwing game a lot.

We also do this one where Mom would toss about 4 yard tosses, and then I would 1 hand catch them. It would be pretty cool.

The funny thing is I’m 8, and Mom is 41, yet I teach her a lot of things like kicking, throwing, and types of how to kick.

I tell her steps of how to throw: like so first, next, and finally, and Mom would say, “Like this?” I would say, “Not quite,” or no or yes.

Then she would somehow forget at the time she needs to remember, so I would have to say the steps over and over so she will remember. Then I would say, “Hold it out like this. Take 2 steps and drop. Then KICK!”

And she still forgets.

And there you have it folks. I (April) was NEVER an athlete. But my lessons with JD do go to show that you can in fact teach an old mom new tricks. Ha!

We’d love to hear what you think of JD’s first published blog post and football class. Drop him a comment below.

Oh, and don’t forget. Real tackle football sign-ups probably start in late April in your state too. If your kids are like JD and refuse to do flag football, you are not going to want to miss those sign-ups.