AIBU to stop my partner from forcing our daughter into more sports?

yup sport. Why does it have to be bloody sport?

so now kids should be dumped into something they don't like to give their parents a break?

Who says it needs to be 'organised'? Got the impression from the opening post that it's an athletic activity that's being talked about. Not joining the laosse team but some exercise

Even if she was, what do you think forcing her to do sport is going to do? 🙄

Dear me OP, of course six hours of sports in a week is enough. In fact your drip feed pushes me in the other direction, if she would prefer to be reading and drawing then she should be allowed to cut down. 3 days a week is plenty.

It's not the same at all to force someone to do something they absolutely hate

and expecting your kids to pick different activities and actually do them, at least to try.

And people are being dishonest pretending kids shouldn't have organised activities. 10 years old are obviously too young to be left completely alone and unsupervised to do things completely alone, on which planet would that be safe.

My youngest DS hates all organised activities. We have tried all sorts but he just doesn't enjoy them. He is quite happy to pootle about at home or the park and do his own thing. His brother does loads of clubs etc. It's just how they are.

No it isn’t.

There’s a middle ground between leaving them to play on devices all day and forcing them out into clubs and activities they don’t enjoy.

Plenty of kids would hate going to activities or clubs but could still enjoy an active lifestyle walking the dog, cycling, or just going for a walk.

“Pushing” children into activities they don’t like is a recipe for disaster. Encouraging a natural curiosity and willingness to try new things is the healthy approach, but it doesn’t mean insisting they do activities they explicitly don’t want to do.

Your husband wants her to do more than that? He’s an arsehole.

Abusive? Neglectful?
🤣🤣🤣🤣

I think the premise of doing an active activity is fine but why does it have to be a sport?

This!

I absolutely hated sport as a kid. I was rubbish at it and PE "lessons" at school just involved being forced to run around a field or stand around while the popular sporty kids who knew what they were doing arse kissed the PE teachers. Home was my respite and I was thankfully never forced to do any sports outside school. From the day I went to college at 16 to today I have never done organised sport again. Pushing traditional sportiness onto kids who hate it and have no aptitude for it has that effect. You'd be much better off encouraging activeness rather than sport. Nature walk? Geo caching? Family bike ride? Fun splash type session at the leisure centre?

It is totally normal for a child to be able to find their own ways of having fun rather than being sent to an organised activity every week. Not all kids are the same. My sister did loads of activities. My brother and did hardly any and rarely had much/any enthusiasm for the ones we did do. I did Brownies and there wasn’t a single week where I wouldn’t rather have stayed home creating my latest set of characters for the elaborate novel I was planning, or gone out to play knights and castles with my friend up the street.

To this day I loathe having my leisure time organised into set activities. All adults are different and all kids are different too.

What does your son do?

what do you do?

this I am afraid. I was never a sporty child. I am neither a team person nor competive and have mild dispraxia. As a child I liked to walk in the local park or just out, garden and do all manner of active activities that were not "sport" Do you make your son read when he doesn't want to or do art or craft activities? and if not then why not?

And there’s the drip

she plays extensively
you had a rule of one sports club
your dh is insisting on changing that
You need to advocate for her and draw a line under this

Which is why it’s great that the dd is playing tennis every week right?
Or are you saying we should Akso push children to do some sports 3~4x a week, Regardiess of whether they enjoy it or not?

If the aim is to give them the live of moving their body so they can sustain that as adults, that’s the wrong way to go.
They need to first find something they enjoy. That’s tennis for her. Why pushing her into doing something she doesn’t enjoy? Encouraging her to play more tennis would be very different imo.

EDIT as I missed the dd is playing 4x a week already!!

@Opalskies your dh needs to give his head a wobble.
your dd is active, doing something she enjoys.
Forcing her to do something she does NOT enjoy, esp at that age, is a recipe for disaster. If he wanted her to stop everything and dig his heels in, he wouldnt do it any other way. It’s just a controlling, paternalistic view that doesn’t see his dd as a person in her own right, with her own likes. It’s not going to work.

did I touch a nerve with you? 😉
You might try to start a fight, but I am not the one needing fresh air.

Seriously worried about what? And why?

My two didn't do any organised activities at that age, they didn't want to, no way would I have pushed them.

They played footy outside, walked the dog, walked to friends, ran about, walked 3 miles to/from school every day.

They both go to the gym now they are older.

Theres really no need to be seriously worried about other parents children not doing extracurricular stuff.

He's trying to force a square peg into a round hole and that's not going to work.

He's being irrational and overbearing and ignoring her personal preferences and autonomy. She gets activity in PE and she takes a sport, tennis.

He wants to mold a child into his image whether she likes it or not.

Forcing her to sacrifice what she loves doing for things she doesn't is not going to turn out a sporty adult, it's going to turn out a woman whose wants are ignored and sacrificed to please an overbearing man. That's what you guys are modeling for her here. Or, she's going to leave as soon as she can and distance herself from a home where her wishes don't matter.

Is that what you want?

I don't like hard rules on this stuff. All my children do activities that keep them fit, but they don't do it because it keeps them fit. They do them because they enjoy them.

Could you perhaps take her swimming as a family? We have a local roller skating club and go together sometimes, I do no skating but I make videos and get to watch tricks from right there, not be told about them afterwards. Boulders? Or Clip n Climb type places? The thing is, sports clubs are sometimes a bit too formal and perhaps she'll respond better to family time exercise instead?

I think encouraging exercise is great, but being strict is counterproductive.

This is probably the perfect way to make her hate any kind of organised sport for life.