Children picking their own teams

Yes it’s tricky and unpleasant but it’s also how the world works - everything is some kind of popularity contest and making your peace with it and learning how to cope and learning how to sell the skills you do have are all important skills

editing to add - if you don’t learn these skills at school you won’t become a resilient adult

I hate this for your daughter. I think it's the kind of thing that old school teachers say "prepares them for life" but it doesn't does it, because A) they don't have the emotional resilience of adults so it leaves them feeling fearful of group projects, not prepared for them and B) actually, when as an adult have you been in a situation at work where everyone picks their best mates to work with - never! Project teams are always selected based on skill and competence, not popularity.
I have the same thing with pe, my son is dyspraxic and I want him to learn that sport keeps us fit, healthy (physically and mentally) and it doesn't matter if you're bad at it, it matters that you have fun. School pe at his primary school was basically a massive competition with him constantly being last - and it just doesn't reflect the real world, lots of people walk the park run and chat with their friends and don't care that they're last, nobody at geriatric walking football gets ranked by ability or picks their team or excludes anyone, nobody in the gym is logging your times. It's all about enjoying it and being as healthy as you can be.
It's mad that children get treated worse than adults when they're less able to cope with it.
I don't think there's a lot you can do about it, the school will say it's teaching them life skills, you could ask them to encourage any left out other children to join her, or do some social engineering to support her a bit.

At this age i think its easier if the teacher picks. However as kids get older its really important to teach them not to blindly chase a popular child who doesn't like them and whom they often have little in common with. Eg instead of A, B,C & D all desperately trying to get in a group with popular E, who has friends F,G & H she will usually prefer, A,B,C & D need to notice each other!!!

Parents can help with this.... they are as bad as kids for desperately chasing for a play date with the confident, popular, typically middle class kid, when perhaps their child would stand a better chance at friendship with a more overlooked other member of the class.

Ive had this from both ends. My eldest is tall, confident, popular, one of the older ones in the class. He has two friends he's been close with since age 4, they are always his first choice if picking groups etc. We constantly get random requests for playdates with children he barely knows, never plays with etc.
By contrast younger DC is short, young in year, less obviously popular. If i ask who she wants over to play, she tends to name a couple of the oldest, most popular confident girls, rather than naming the lovely slightly quieter girl the teacher says she actually plays happily with at school! This is despite her often coming out hand in hand with this quieter girl & going to the same dance classes etc.

It took her easily a year or two to stop gravitating to girls who never actually played with her and weren't especially nice to her, purely because they were confident "leaders". I did a lot of talking ti her about who she actually enjoyed playing with, found fun, who was kind to her etc. I also asked the teacher who she played with and tried to invite those kids to play rather than simply inviting the obvious popular kids.

They absolutely should be picking their own teams by 8/9 it's part of development. Also by 8/9 they know their peers they know who they'll work well with and who they don't get along with.
Has a ND girl I absolutely hated it at school when the teachers chose the teams because they'd invariably split up friendship groups and we'd always end up in groups of people who we'd never interact with otherwise and had no desire to interact with. As someone who found it hard enough to talk in the friendship group I already had; being forced to work with others often sent me into what would now be described as autistic crisis.

I think she needs to learn this is how the world is. She sounds autistic to me. Unfortunately she’s always going to find this stuff difficult. I don’t think teachers need to be picking groups. It’s a bit of a life lesson, even if a difficult one.

Totally agree

i hate team sports

but wouldn’t mind doing dance or individual sports or ice skating

I did like volleyball though

Well, winning for a sporty but not smart kid might be the only win they get in school 🤷‍♀️

Adults are dividing anyone. It’s just stating facts. Some children are naturally popular and some less so and some really struggle with social skills and end up constantly left out which is damaging to their self esteem. Teachers can easily mitigate this by selecting groups, rather than allowing children to do it themselves. Also means they can split up trouble makers and put together those who will work better with each other. It’s also good for life skills to get children working with a brush selection of people not just people they like. Especially good for those children who are popular and have good social skills to given the opportunity to develop these further by learning to work with different types if proof. So it s a win win whichever way you look at it.

Tell that to the sporty kids who are often obsessed with winning!

Then people wonder why kids who aren't "sporty" hate physical activity and end up obese or unfit? School sports should cater for all. We need less emphasis on "team" sports and more emphasis on general keeping fit and activities - rather than team sports, kids should have the choice to do other things, like gym where they can do their own thing.

says no one ever 😂

Because it’s not just about winning?

But all the kids in the group will need to be in one of the teams so why does it matter

And yet IME most times they picked the same kids in roughly the same order as the ‘popular/sporty’ kids did.

I do think in the case of popularity there’s usually equal parts wanting to fit in/hoping that the popular kid will remember notice/pressure to do what’s ’expected’. But outside of the example of picking the best friend kids by and large behaved the same.

This!! Why would you want to pick someone who can't catch a ball in a cricket team, or someone who is tone deaf if it involves singing etc.

Perhaps because they might like to chose who they want and know how it feels to be left out

Can't believe teachers still do the "wait of shame" as classmates choose their own teams.

They knew who the sporty or popular kids were. Nobody needed to tell them.

I mean why wouldn’t they choose the sporty kids first for a team sport?

I mean ime you would pick a sporty kid yourself and then get advised by them who else to pick itms

Not in my observation. They would pick the same kids first without prompting from anyone.

Yes you’d get told who to pick

I Think it is horrible for your dd

YANBU.

I was always the last to be picked for everything - they wouldn’t have picked me at all if they could’ve gotten away with it. I still have a memory of being stood there whilst the popular kids chose their teams. In the end there was two of us left standing and they ended up arguing (as in the whole class, not just the pickers) about who had to take me. I was mortified and it’s had a lasting impact on my self esteem. I’m 44 now and still assume everyone dislikes me.

Totally agree. I wasn't sporty or popular at school (almost definitely ND and really hadn't found my feet as a person yet - I was odd, in a nutshell) and being picked last every time was like ritual humiliation. Plus it encourages clique behaviour. Teacher should pick (mixing things up a little would also allow students to bond with others in the class a bit more), and IMO should also allocate pairs for pair activities. There were times at secondary when I literally had no friends, and the 'find yourself a partner' thing could be even more humiliating.

I suppose what sits behind my frustration is a wider sense of how much society elevates the outgoing, confident, extroverted types — whether it’s in celebrity culture, politics, boardrooms, or even the classroom. Those who are quieter, thoughtful, or less socially dominant often have just as much to offer, but can be overlooked simply because they don’t shout the loudest.

There's a bit of truth in that, but when will we teach our children to become more extrovert if we molly cuddle them for years?

You can't change your personality and you don't need to, but you learn to be outspoken and confident. It's a necessary life skills. "Being shy" is not a compliment or an excuse for copping out of normal life.

It's helpful to our children to encourage them towards activities and behaviour and become naturally confident. The more you do, the less of a big deal it is.

Hated this when doing PE as rubbish at it. Being in a quiz group, they all wanted me