How to handle sports day this year?

My daughter is also hypermobile and is just under the 0.4th percentile. She can't run, and finds activities like jumping and skipping very hard. The school has usually allowed her to be a helper rather than a participant and she is much happier doing that.

DD is very bright and working above age related expectations in English and maths. She’s a good all rounder at eveything non sports related, including music and art. She’s rubbish at sport. She knows keeping active is important for health but I’ve also always told her that actually being good at sport (which is different than keeping active) doesn’t get you anywhere in life and being as clever and creative as she is will get her far further. Luckily she doesn’t yet care about not doing very well on sports day (she’s in juniors) but if it upset her, I’d keep her off. Keeping active for health reasons is totally different to competing publicly in front of parents and peers- this isn’t done in any other area or subject (involuntarily).

Sure, but they don’t have to do maths (and look obviously worse than everyone else) while all the school and parents look on do they?

Just so counter productive isn’t it? Putting people off sports for life.

Plus it’s supposed to be sodding FUN not character building! So if it’s not fun don’t do it!

Theres a whiff of sadism about some of these posters - hope they are not actually parents.

Yes. I can still remember how humiliated I felt at one particular sports days. Getting my legs all tangled up during the obstacle race (I can hear the sniggers 50+ years later), coming last in every race in front of everyone and feeling so small. The following year I broke my leg badly and my first thought was how pleased I was that I might be too unwell to take part in sports day.

I didn't do any sport for years afterwards. It wasn't until I was in my 30s/40s that I discovered if no-one was watching I could actually run quite fast.

What a way to put - some -children off exercise. Maybe we could get those who don't understand to sing in front of a whole school and the parents.

Can we just be clear - for the hard of thinking - that publicly humiliating children, in front of the entire school, is not the best way to build their ‘resilience’. It’s actually cruel.

Dd2 worked herself up over it. I think when she was 8 I told her she never had to do it again.

Or you just didn't notice because you were a kid.

It also isn't just about losing, it's about coming last, always and very obviously struggling and with an audience who almost always make it worse.

Competitive races are fine for the sporty kids who want them but I don't see why kids who have no chance and find it miserable should have to participate if they don't want to.

It's supposed to be fun.

Well that's why there's usually 'egg and spoon, obstacle, sack race etc
When I was a kid, children just shrugged off losing, it wasn't a big deal. What has happened to make them so feeble?

Your dismissive attitude just illustrates the problems people with medical conditions face every day.

and when it isn't 'someone' but the same child in every single race who is clearly struggling, upset and doesn't stand a chance?

What is the point?

Someone has to come last!

It’s not analogous to anything else. It’s a hang over from Greeks / Romans / public school sports. Seems cruel to make all the kids do it. The obvious answer is to let the kids that want to race race and everyone else cheers them on. That’s what they do at secondary. It’s not hard.

I find the “make them do it for the greater good” posters extremely weird and abit sinister. Feel sorry for their kids. Who prioritises “the local community” over their own child’s mental health? Bizarre.

Exams are not ritual humiliation unless the school is calling out the order in which people came in the exam

I’m not saying kids who struggle don’t feel humiliation. I’m saying the process in itself isn’t humiliating in the way sports day is as there is an audience and everyone can see you struggle and do poorly in a very public arena

You can choose to open your results privately. Children that aren't musical or artsy don't tend to have to perform a solo/alone/have it be very obvious that they are struggling with parents gawping on and sympathy clapping.

Children that aren't sporty don't need to be mortified on sports day just so other children can 'shine'.

Thinking longer term, could you help them try out a few different sports so hopefully they can find something they like and feel positive about?

There is on results day. Races take different forms. Great if you have a sporty kid, great if you have an academic kid, great if you have an artsy or musical kid. We need to realise that performances are really about specific areas of talent (all of those I’ve named take some kind of public form) and it’s okay to shine in yours and not another’s. That’s our vibe, I’m not saying it should be yours.

This.

They need to learn they don’t have to be good at everything. They can come last and the world doesn’t end.

Poor kid. He shouldn't have been asked to do it in the first place.

Personally I would speak to the teacher about finding a happy medium, like just doing the egg and spoon race and then helping with something. If they say he has to do it all then you can take him out.

I don't generally have an issue with sports day for the majority, but it should be treated sensibly with other ways to involve the small number of children who struggle with it deeply.

There's coming last, and there's coming last... ritually last, when there was zero level of competition about it, being the only child on the field is very different to having a mixed level of sucess and being last occasionally.

Sports day can absolutely be humiliating.

When I was 7, I moved schools just before the end of the year. I'd been in the school about 2 weeks by sports day. I had no friends within 100 miles. I was the smallest child in the year group.
No body asked if I could skip before being forced to perform in front of 200 children, the staff and another 200 parents.
I tried skipping. I got tangled in the fucking rope several times before ditching the stupid fucking thing and stomping alone down the whole fucking track to the end after everyone else had finished.

Then I was forced to stomp back up the fucking field alone to fetch the stupid fucking rope and walk it back down to the teachers again.

That is most definitely humiliating. On an epic scale.

I still hate that cunt of a teacher 35+ years later after only 4 weeks in her class. I hate her more now than I did then because with time I've realised what a fucking awful thing that was to do to a vulnerable 7 year old, to show zero recognition that you'd asked the impossible of them, to fail to recognise that they tried with no escape route out of the situation, and then punish them in front of hundreds of people because they failed.

The following week I was set upon by a group of boys at the end of the school day and the biggest boy in the class forced me onto my hands and knees and pulled my pants down. Fortunately my mum caught him and put the fear of god into him.
The public isolation of sports day was a green light for bullies.

I didn't learn to skip until I was 10, 3 years later.
My dyspraxic child is better at sport than me.
What I did do was get my children into non-competitive activities like parkrun and swimming lessons early so they could at least run, and get some co-ordination and not spend their entire school years being default class liability.

PE taught me to loathe competitive and team sports.
Suprisingly after all the humiliations, failiures, insults, goading and bullying that were a feature of most PE lessons, I am a fit adult, but no body is laughing at me in a gym because I only squat 60% of my bodyweight, or laughing for being mediocre at parkrun.

Phone apps taught me to run.
All school sport was a pointless waste of time.

School sport should be handled with much more sensitivity and creativity. Too many people are turned off sport for life by it. If schools don't make reasonable adjustments to sensitively include all children, it's reasonable to miss a distressing event. I am generally a "feel the fear and do it anyway" type person, but sometimes that is not the solution.

Oh bless him. 😢

People also forget that it’s not just about kids who don’t like sports day. If you have dyspraxia that is a physical disability and they have those kids competing directly against able bodied children. There’s a difference between not being good and being miles behind.

Sunburn and bug bites? Come off it. That's really lame. Being outside for a few hours in the UK isn't dangerous. I dread to think what kind of generation we would raise if we teach them that.

Yes my heart bled for DS2 when he was made todo the sack race - dyspraxia can’t jump with two feet together = sack race disaster. Some other child had decided not todo it so he was asked to as a resilient team player (which he is). He had to roll across the line to the sympathy cheers. Whilst people told me “what a good sport he was”. He was mortified. Properly mortified.