I cannot stand watching my child do dance /shows !

You say that but my youngest daughter is an absolute tomboy who LOVES football and rugby, when I used to pick her up from school (she doesn't go anymore) she always wanted to show off her keepy uppies

DS1 had that very book! I had to limit it to three jokes a day in the end.

Wait till they are improvising on their recorders, then you can truly moan.

(And even that isn't as bad as the U3A recorder group (30+ members) which meets for 2 hour sessions NEXT DOOR. They've been learning Row, Row, Row Your Boat Gently Down The Stream as a round. Oh my goodness..)

I never wanted children and when I read things like this I'm glad I never caved in. I find watching children randomly preform and let's pretend tedious too. I just about managed pouring an imaginary cup of tea and pretending to drink it when my niece wanted a tea party and joining in with The Wheels on the Bus would have been worse than a stint in hell.

My niece does love singing, it's like being in a musical when she's around and she practices her dance moves whilst I'm cooking dinner. Luckily she learned early on not to demand "Auntie - look".L

Also I'm glad she wasn't a boy because although I do go to see her in her theatre club shows I wouldn't be watching her playing football or rugby.

I had two of these kids. I put them in a theatre school so they have routines to show me now. I have one graceful pro, and one that's a grinning pile of elbows. I love watching them both equally. There's something so purely lovely about them doing their absolute best and getting to cheer them on. Although sometimes when a show song comes on in Morrison's and I'm trying to usher a small enthusiastic flash mob through the aisles it can be a little wearing.

We've been to a load of shows, Eisteddfodau etc. I love to watch children being unapologetically uninhibited. I have no interest in the perfect form, I'm there for the joy of it all. It's glorious.

Myself i think theres too much pressure on parents to pat their kids on the back and kiss their feet for every single thing they do

I just think if the kids like doing dance, gymnastics, sports thats great and you go ahead and do it, but just because im your mum doesnt mean IM going to share the same passion

‘This is really sad’.

Your attempted hijacking of an amusing thread and total lack of even a modicum of a sense of humour is really sad.

I really didn’t enjoy the make believe tea parties and picnics. Never let it be known of course, but make believe really wasn’t my thing.

Don't get me wrong, I wouldn't expect anyone else to love it as much as we do, but she puts her heart and soul into it so no way am I going to be secretly rolling my eyes or praying for it to be over!

I'll bet all these people hating it will remember it so fondly when their kids have grown up and they think back

I totally understand. My DD played hockey (and still does as an adult), which was many years standing on the sideline of a freezing cold pitch in the gales/rain, wearing all your Woolies, then offering sympathy and a bag of frozen peas whenever she got a bruise after being hit. When she got her license, I only came to the matches when the sun was shinning, absolute bliss!! If that is of any comfort. Good job we love them!

To add insult to injury, dh worked weekends so it was always me, he got to ferry her to swimming, drama etc during the week and sit indoors.

DS1 has two left feet, so no dancing from him, but we did have to watch him do that dab thing about a gazillion times. ‘Come and see round my Minecraft luxury 200 room villa’ was the dreaded request in our house. Every. Room🤣 With his brother it was always about watching him do stupidly dangerous stunts. All watched with a heady combination of admiration and terror.

I wouldn’t have been arsed about watching them prance around their living rooms as kids either

I hate modern dance. DD10 LOVES it though. she said to me she looks forward to joining a dance club in year 7 when she starts high school next year and asked if I'd come to watch her in the school performance if she got in. I just looked at her and I told her
"evie i love you, but i am not paying the school to watch 10 other bratty kids flail about when i already see you do it enough at home"

It didnt go down well

🤣🤣🤣🤣 lol
Ours was an hour at least once a week, badgered to help, buy things, donate things, go to other events. As for the show itself, come at 4pm, plaster your child in make up, glitter, complicated hairstyle, glitter, hairspray, dance/break/dance til 11pm. Get home put exhausted child to bed, wake up child for school, plastered in glitter. We did one show, that was enough!

I remember the shows, it came somewhere after dinosaurs and at around the same time as making potions! After mine was grown up i used to sometimes pick up a friend's child from school who was very keen on shows, they wrote them and we had to perform them together. I really got into it and enjoyed bigging up my part. But that is very different from going thorough it every day

Our oldest has never participated in them but dd15, ds11 and dd11 have over the years made some fucking hilarious productions on a private YouTube channel that they would randomly screen share whilst we were watching the weather etc 😁that have been fucking shit really but seeing them so serious is brilliant., I want to keep these videos forever. Actual live performances, I have no time for either tbf

My council offer group ensembles for every child instrumentalist. After the first show I thought it must be excruciating to be a parent of an older child who could actually play having to sit through the "open strings" violin ensemble. A Dad of a more senior musician who I knew told me it wasn't. Now I've got a kid who can play quite well, I've realised he was right, there's something quite cute about seeing the progression from the squeeky beginners to the competent middle grades, through the older secondary school kids right up to the virtuosos who might well have professional. musicianship in their future.

It is all stuff they've trained for a practiced, with some direction and an ending. Not the same as interminable shows that are made up on the spot at home and go on for ever. Me and my cousins did gymnastics "shows". My kids and their cousins have the decency to script a play. I've coached them to always plan their ending!

Where and how do you think the professionals started? You can’t have one without the other.

👏🏼 👏🏼 this ⬆️

Lol I’m not sure watching professional performers is quite comparable…

I absolutely love watching my girls dance and show my there routines for the show I love watching the others to I like seeing what they could be with the dance school when there older

Even worse I had a friend’s kid who would come to ours and insist on us watching her “shows”. Her mum was most put out that my teenage boys weren’t interested. She was known in our house as “that annoying kid”.

@5490t ... Arf! There is another side to this, though, which is possibly worse. I was a shy child and my mother pushed me into performing in public <shudder>, in everything from the Infants' School nativity to the "Junior Orchestra", aged 11. I didn't want to do it and (most of all) I really didn't want her there in the front row.

At least you're a grown-up and have some sort of choice!

Mine did a spa for me once. Started out petty well- they’d put meditation music on, got me to lie down and put cucumber in my eyes and put a face mask on. They then decided to try their version of a massage and it was like being attacked by some crazy ninjas. It bloody hurt but I had two of them sitting on me so couldn’t actually get them off me easily.

I’d rather do that than imaginary play 😭