Soccer practice -- involves walking off the field?!

Sometimes I turn to Daddy to step in on parenting dilemmas.

I picked up Natalie for soccer practice and was thrilled to hear that she had "excellent listening ears" all day. I thought that this would bode well for soccer practice, combined with her excitement about Saturday's game, and the pictures she was showing her friends, etc. Got her all dressed in many layers, got her shin guards on, the long socks, the cleats -- and she was showing her friends her "soccer outfit", and she seemed very excited to be going to practice.

We get to practice a little early (5 minutes) and we sat on the bleachers waiting for her coach. At practice I have to amuse Nicholas -- not an easy thing to do. Coach shows up and Natalie heads out with her team. About 10 minutes into the practice, Nicholas is tired of sitting and asks to "walk around". So I take him for a walk away from the field. We start to head up some stairs, and I see Natalie following us, calling "Mommy, I want to go to the playground" -- a good 50 yards away from her coach, team, and practice field! So Nicholas and I turn around to go back down the stairs, and I tell Natalie to go back to her team. She says, "I want to go home." I tell her that she cannot go home, that she has to stay at practice, that she just can't walk off the field like that, and she says she doesn't want to play soccer.

Now I am admittedly starting to see red. I send DH an email saying that she just walked off the practice field. By now we are near her practice field, and I send her back on to the field. She stands there and won't go back to her team. So I tell her we are going home and she can tell her coach that she is quitting soccer. She refuses to move.

I tell her we are going home and we head towards the car and I tell her I really don't like that she is a quitter. She says she is not a quitter and she wants to go back to soccer.

We turn back around to head towards practice and she manages to get back on the field. 10 minutes of hardly participating, and then she says she needs to go potty.

Like there is a bathroom next to the field. (!)

So off we go again -- back to the car -- and I told her she could wear one of Nicholas' diapers to do her thing. I did not think that this would go over well, and no, it did not.

We managed to get her back on the field again. She is standing around looking at her teammates practice.

I am seeing red again so I call DH on the phone and tell him to talk to her.

We went round and round with her for about 10 minutes. No, you can't go to the game on Saturday if you don't go to practice today. No, it is not fair to your teammates if you just walk off the field. No, you can't just walk away from your coach. Etc., etc.

She gets back on the field again and this time she practices. A little. For about 15 minutes total.

I didn't know what to do at this point so I tried the "positive reinforcement" approach and took her and her brother out to dinner at their favorite restaurant, Silverado. I told Natalie that we were going out to dinner to celebrate that she was not a quitter and she went back to practice and listened to her coach. I have no idea if this was the "right" thing to do, but I was running out of ideas. And we discussed at dinner that she would NOT walk off the field and she would NOT walk away from her coach and she would NOT let her teammates down.

Heaven knows if all of this will make any sort of an impression.