My 12-year-old daughter was about to compete in her first swimming race when I heard her coach say something that made my blood boil.<\/p>\n
“You’re seriously swimming with those hairy legs? Even the boys will laugh at you!”<\/p>\n
Gia immediately covered herself with a towel, fighting tears.<\/p>\n
Since our divorce, my ex-husband Jamie had handled swimming practices. I’d never met Coach Emma before.<\/p>\n
After the race, I approached Emma without revealing who I was.<\/p>\n
She proudly explained that girls needed discipline and proper grooming. Then she mentioned a swimmer whose father did everything because her mother was apparently uninvolved.<\/p>\n
“What’s the girl’s name?” I asked.<\/p>\n
“Gia.”<\/p>\n
I smiled. “I’m Gia’s mother.”<\/p>\n
Her expression changed instantly.<\/p>\n
Later, Gia revealed Emma had repeatedly criticized my parenting. Worse, my daughter believed I didn’t care about swimming.<\/p>\n
When I confronted Jamie, he admitted he’d discouraged me from attending practices because he wanted swimming to be their special activity.<\/p>\n
He’d enjoyed being praised as the devoted parent, never realizing how it affected Gia.<\/p>\n
I reported Emma to the program director. Following an investigation, she was removed from coaching the youth group.<\/p>\n
Three weeks later, Gia competed again.<\/p>\n
This time, both her parents cheered from the stands.<\/p>\n
She didn’t win, but she improved her time.<\/p>\n
And when she climbed out of the pool, she was smiling\u2014without hiding behind her towel.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
My 12-year-old daughter was about to compete in her first swimming race when I heard her coach say something that made my blood boil. “You’re seriously swimming with those hairy legs? Even the boys will laugh at you!” Gia immediately covered herself with a towel, fighting tears. Since our divorce, my ex-husband Jamie had handled …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10789,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10787","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10787","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10787"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10787\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10790,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10787\/revisions\/10790"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/10789"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10787"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10787"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10787"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}