if you have 2 performances of your Christmas Show ...

[redskyatnight]

All the Reception children at DD's school are taking part in a Christmas show. They are doing 2 performances of the show. A letter came home saying every family could have 2 tickets which could either be 2 tickets to 1 show or 1 ticket to both shows. Because it was more convenient for us, DH and I opted to get 2 tickets for the 2nd show, which is today.

However, the first show was after school on Wednesday. Parents not going to the show were asked to pick up their children at 5pm. When I arrived dead on 5pm, I found DD and only 3 other children waiting to be collected. The show had finished 15 minutes earlier and they were the ONLY 4 children (out of 56 in the year) not to have had a parent watching it. DD was very upset with me and wanted to know why I'd not been to see her show when "everyone else's parents had".

AIBU to think that if you have 2 shows you should look to distribute the parents a bit more evenly between them? DD was perfectly ok with the idea that half the mums and dads would watch the first show and the other half would watch the second, but she felt very left out on Wednesday with such a skewed distribution.

well I think YAB a bit U to be honest. I am sure that two performances were offered so that people who need to arrange time off work or have other commitments etc. can make suitable arrangements, and as such it's not for the school to say who should come to which one. After all, you and your DH picked the slot which was most convenient for you, and I would assume other parents did the same.

D

It was your decision to attend the second show together, how would you have felt if the school had allocated you tickets for the first show instead because it "distributed the numbers evenly"? You don't actually know that only 4 children didn't have a parent watching the show that day, only that 4 children were left when you got there at 5. If other parents turned up at 4.50 to collect their children they had already left when you arrived.

I bet the school wasn't very good at monitoring the tickets and that actually those who said they were going to the second show just turned up at the first one. I taught Reception last year and when we did a concert the teachers were given the tickets and the parents had to send in a letter requesting either 2 morning tickets, 2 afternoon tickets, or 1 of each. We had equal amounts of tickets and I was told to give them out on a first come first serve basis, so of course people who were late giving their letters in sometimes got tickets for the performance they couldn't go to. One mother told me to keep the morning tickets I gave her as she couldn't make it then, and if she couldn't go to the afternoon performance she just couldn't go at all. I felt really bad, but think she must have spoken to some mums with older kids at the school who probably told her the school never check which tickets you have, so she turned up on the afternoon anyway, as did most parents regardless of the tickets they had been given. Quite a few also sent grandparents to one show and then the parents went to the other, even though they were only meant to have 2 tickets altogether.

It could well be that many of the other parents had opted for the 'one ticket for each show option'- then there would still have been one parent to pick most children, even if only half the tickets were for that show.

YAB totally unreasonable. It was your choice to get two tickets for one performance. What has that got to do with the school???

I would object strongly if my school started dictating that only one parent could go to each performance. it's down to you to explain to your daughter. Nothing to do with the school at all!!

We have the same system and did the same thing, dh and I came to the daytime show because we had dd2 with us (we can request extra tickets) and thought she would be more likely to kick off if tired at an evening show.

It was the same for dd1, most other children had parents there on the first evening but she didn't. She did, however, have her whole family there the next day when a lot of kids didn't have anyone.

tbh, my view is that when they do multiple shows the children have to understand they won't have someone there for every show. It would be a massive task for the school to try and balance attendance on top of all the other stuff they have to organise, ticket allocation is complicated enough as it is.

YANBU.
DS is Joseph in his nativity and will be doing two shows. I'm going to both of them.
The first in the afternoon with DD's and MIL. And the evening one with DP.
I wouldn't like to think that there wasn't someone watching him both times.
The only stipulation the school has made is no pre school children at the evening performance.

We get round this by going to a performance each, but me and my ex aren't together anyway, and we are allowed 3 tickets so I take DH.

It is horrible when things like this happen, and I can understand why you are upset. Something which is supposed to be an exciting positive experience for your dd has turned into something that has upset her.

The school should have worked harder to occupy the children that were not collected until the time they asked you to collect at, and this is where I think the problem is, not the ticket distribution. They could make the most of that 10 - 15 minutes and made the remaining children feel happy. Instead the teachers probably chose to have the children all dressed and ready to go, making them sit waiting with nothing to do so that they could get home earlier.

Do you know they were the only ones not to have had a parent watching? Is it possible that the other parents have past experience, and know that when the school says "collect at 5pm" that means "you should probably get here at 4:30 or your child will be left waiting"?

I think this is a non-issue. In hindsight, perhaps you should have emphasised that you would not be coming to this one, but would be there tomorrow, so she was clear that you would be going. I find it quite hard to believe that the ticket allocation was 52 lots of parents for one night and four for the other. Perhaps what she was trying to say is that it felt like everyone had a parent there, but to be honest, that's what my daughter says all the time about events like have a cup of tea with the teacher, then I find out later loads of people couldn't go.

Unreasonable for the school to sort this out, but reasonable that your daughter was a bit upset (though presumably the children who do it tomorrow might get upset that no-one is watching them then).