A vent seeing as I can't show my real disappointment -school awards evening

[Teddypops]

DD is in Y7. All of her friends had an email about an award they were winning at school. The awards evening was this evening.

We had no email. She got no award.

She does quite well at school (generally grade 7 in the important stuff). But really doesn't put much effort into anything else other than her hair and make up.

She has no interest in sports or any hobbies despite us giving her every single opportunity. Nothing !!

I'm disappointed. But obviously I can't show it to her.

So i'm venting on here instead.

FFS when did mumsnet become quite so viscious?

In about 2001, if I remember rightly (and it's 'vicious').

If you can't see the difference between face paint and makeup, there's no point explaining it to you.

I hate makeup on young girls, but I particularly hate it on girls who still look like children.

Dear @Teddypops

Aww. Poor girl. My cousins had the same thing. They felt devastated. It is ALWAYS the same people getting each award though.

I TOTALLY get why you are dissapointed though. Make sure she does try hard but her life.

They both involve putting "paint" on your face to make yourself look different.

One is "branded" as for adults and one for children, but there's no intrinsic difference. My DD has gone to school today with glittery green eyelids.

It's a difference of intent. Face paint to make yourself look like lion or a clown is for fun. Makeup is to make yourself look more sexually attractive.

but that could could happen at 10. And sure as heck haven’t “gone through puberty”

puberty for girls doesn’t generally finish until 16

I suspect what you dislike is the overt sexualisation of children. That's not synonymous with wearing makeup.

As well as the afore mentioned glittery eye shadow my DD likes painting her nails in different colours and using mascara as she thinks her eyelashes are too pale. This is as much an extension of the facepaint she wore as a younger child as it is similar to "adult" makeup.

“Looking like a woman rather than a girl”

are you talking about starting puberty ie 10-13

or

“gone through puberty” ie 15/16

and if you mean the latter, which is what you said, you don’t think they should be able to try on and wear make up until puberty has finished?

@MsRosley make up isn’t only to make a person “sexually attractive”. Make up is used in theatre/tv/films and has nothing to do with sex in that case.

You're absolutely right, makeup is sometimes used in theatre/tv to produce the effect of natural skin tone under light. It's also used in circus acts to make people look comical. Neither of these instances has anything to do with women using makeup in everyday scenarios, which is to make themselves look more attractive.

I think you have conflated how you got your sense of worth, winning awards at school and teams ect, with how your daughters school assign extra ordinary merit. There’s something not quite right with your thought process. And it’s not great for kids to be coveting these kind of awards anyway. And I’d be ok with a kid at that age coasting, I would rather they settled into adolescence and grew into their bones and worked out how to study later on (hopefully before GCSEs) this time is so critical for their development and I’ve seen quite a few kids who were kept to the grindstone and didn’t have time to just.. mess about.
be happy! She did it without needing intervention, there’s only a few times in life you can get away with things like that.

@MsRosley which is why I had suggested to the OP that she encourages this interest that her daughter has and help her learn lots of different techniques etc. How do you know this 12 year old is interested in make up to look “sexy”? She could be interested in colours - what matches, what doesn’t etc.
The OP hadn’t responded to my suggestion though.

Obviously it’s a 7/8 for year 7s. It’s relevant to the year group. Lots of school use the same system to grade all years. If she’s said A’s would you be being like this about it? It’s exactly the same. 7s and 8s are an A and A+ grade. The 7s and 8s aren’t only relevant to GCSE.

I never won anything at school (except for a local cross-country running championship for which I was on the only entry in my age group). However, I'm delighted to say that, aged 53, I'm making up for lost time and I'm up for a major award in my industry tomorrow night. I'll be over the moon if I win but I'm bloody delighted to be one of the finalists. Hope this is some consolation for you, cos it's hard when your kids miss out on recognition.

I can’t believe how many people are either deliberately antagonising you or didn’t go to school 😂🙈 I wonder how their school graded stuff! Mine used an ABC system the same as GCSE grades then, when I got an A in year 7 nobody believed that meant I had as a genius because I could only academically achieve a D due to not having covered the material yet 😂😂😂😂🤦🏽‍♀️🤦🏽‍♀️🤦🏽‍♀️🤦🏽‍♀️

Very confused ^^

Is it buggery sad.

What a depressing thought

My DD aged 12 is a lot more intelligent than both me and my DH, and last week she had an award for academic excellence at her awards ceremony.

She works really hard, and is very astute, mature and quick thinking, so I think that she has a natural aptitude for academic study.

If she put no effort in, didn't seem bothered by her grades or improving them, I could understand why she wouldn't be awarded anything. She deserves the recognition, and she should be very proud of her achievements.

If she wasn't so academic, I'd be less inclined to be worried about her not being awarded anything.

I suspect OP has mis understood the targets. She may have been predicted that from her SATs results her final GCSEs are targeted as 7s and 8s and she is currently on target to achieve those based on her current work. It’s very unlikely she’s achieving 7/8 now at y7 bud some schools may not explain it properly. Our school gives the child yearly targets and haven’t actually said what their GCSE target would be.

Yeah I wasn't even wearing makeup at 12... I guess times have changed.

@celticprincess I've not mis understood anything. That's how our school works. They work in a 1-9 scale. Even in year 7.

It's not GCSE level. It's KS3.

If you were giving your DD an award, what would it be for? Serious question.

I was wearing tonnes of eye kohl at 12 and this was donkeys decades ago. Times haven’t changed, young people, male and female when I was that age, have worn make up from young ages. Don’t be so high and mighty.