In all my years of watching wrestling I’ve seen some pretty painful moves put on kids. The sport is incredibly hard and brutal on the body. And even though I know this, I did something I’ve never done before this week. I stopped a match.

My youngest son was doing his thing, out on a mat fighting it out with another kid his age. He was up, he was down, back and forth they went striving for dominance. Then the kid caught my son in a weird hold. He didn’t have a cradle with a leg, but he locked onto his other wrist and squeezed. The arm he left under my son prevented him from being able to pin my son, but he just kept squeezing my son’s shoulders together. My son screamed out in pain, and I mean screamed, but the teenager playing referee still didn’t stop the match.

To say I made a scene is probably an understatement, but no way was I going to let this match continue. The boy couldn’t pin my son from the painful hold he had, and he showed no signs of trying to change his hold to one that would pin. To allow him to keep crushing my son’s chest until the third period ran out seemed beyond assinine to me–we had more than thirty seconds still go. So no, you’re not gonna stall there, torturing my son. I’ve never been more fine with a forfeit in my entire life.

I have to give my son kudos though. After taking some time to rub out his aching sternum, he went back out on the mat to face the last competitor he had for the day. I don’t know if I could have been so mentally tough at that age.