To think listing best friends in the yearbook is cruel and unnecessary?

[LadyFuckrington]

Dd is eleven and has always struggled socially but in this last term she has blossomed and made lots of good friends among her year group.

However, we received the yearbook yesterday which comprised a page by each child all done to the same template. One of the boxes was a short list of 'my best friends'. Only one of the girls had listed DD.

She was distraught yesterday and cried for an hour. We've smoothed it over and told her that she's so special to everybody that they didn't need to list her. But really, this is bound to happen with lists like this, isn't it?

Aibu to be really fucked off with the school? I'm glad to see the back of it tbh, onwards and upwards to secondary.

I think the problem half the time are team games. Some people would prefer to enjoy exercise that isn't competitive. Many adults do. There should be more opportunity in schools for children who would prefer it to do sports or activities that aren't team based and where everyone isn't yelling at them.

My ds's school did that last year too. When I had a read I noticed a few kids who didn't get a mention by anyone. I guess it might seem like a normal question but the teachers must realise some kids have no close friends. In the case of our school the PTA do the yearbook so it may explain the thoughtlessness. It is worth saying something to the school.

Nur - the reason you need compulsory singing in primary years - I'd say ideally right up to Year 6 - is that children's voices don't develop until later. Some singing teachers won't take a child until age 10. You won't be able to pick out the talented children age 6 or 7. Well you will, but they won't necessarily be the same children who you'd pick out at 11 or 12. Everybody needs to do it to give talent a chance to come out in those that it's going to.

I couldn't hold a tune to save my life at 7. By 10 I was singing solos and considered rather talented. Given the choice, I'd have dropped all singing by Y3 which would have potentially affected my entire future (I now teach performing arts).

Thehouse, while that maybe true for some about SNs etc, and thise for whom it causes problems shoukd be catered for, it is not true for all, my DS has dyspraxia and sensory processing disorder and absolutely loves rounders and most other sports.

Moon you are SO right. It wasn't until I was an adult that I learned that I do like exercise...just on my own. Cycling, running...both wonderful. But it is hard I suppose for schools to offer such things.

That Yearbook idea sounds awful, as does the nomination for best looking boy/girl - WTF?!

My high school did class photos but also the friendship group photos for leavers. They were very awkward for a lot of us, for various reasons.

I loathed team sports or competitive sports at school and it put me off exercise for many years. I would have loved pilates or yoga or climbing but PE was taught in a very unimaginitive way, just relentlessly picking teams for netball, lesson after lesson.

LadyFuck definitely contact the school about the yearbook; in fact also contact the Y6 teacher directly. This is really poor and she/he should be made aware of your DDs unhappiness.

it shouldt be though i hate and have always hated team sport i love swimming though mainly because its something i can do at my own pace with no judgement.

Now manic that is the first sensible reason for compulsory singing I have ever heard - I have questioned it frequently and nobody has ever come up with that defense of the horrible agonising humiliating practice, it'salways been stuff about all being in it together as a school/ year/ class or about it being "good for" children in some wooly moral way :o

But insisting children who can't hold a tune sing is every bit as humiliating as making them go to the toilet in public IMO and lots go to lengths to avoid it - class mates will tell them they can't sing if they aren't already painfully aware.

As singing is never "taught" I at school it is unique in that the child is never helped to improve but made painfully aware they are dreadful at it and have no talent at it, then forced to keep doing it.

You must have had quite a thick skin to keep singing away confidently through the years while you couldn't hold a tune and suddenly "emerge a swan" at 10! Most children have self labelled by 10 - and nobody tells them their voicemight transform all on its own one day and come out all tuneful!

My dd1 would hate to play rounders all day, but would love to have a say devoted to mental maths and maths exercises.
Dd2 wouldn't care as long as she could spend most of the time sitting around talking to friends. Maths or rounders.
Ds loves sport and would love to spend all day, however he'd find a whole day of rounders too much. Rounders in the morning cricket in the afternoon possibly.
But he'd be just as happy with rounders in the morning maths all afternoon.

Lady Fuckrington or could I use "Fuck'rs" for short ?

I feel your/your dd's pain. See my thread about a party incident demolishing my dc's confidence this week.

First of all, well done to your dd for blossoming and making good friends this year.

I think it could be a good omen for transition to secondary as she has recent memories of forming friendship bonds whereas others who have been friends since earlier down the school may feel a little more phased by being in a whole new larger environment and needing to branch out socially all over again.

I would suggest an alternative to the school such as nominations for best hair style, most likely to win the nobel prize, most likely to win BGT or mastermind/ most afraid of spiders/ who used the most glue/paint etc and silly stuff like that as an alternative. Fun silly stuff not about popularity.

if a kid is bad at maths, would it be acceptable for a teacher just to let them daydream in every maths class and do nothing?

if the answer is no, then why do many people think it is acceptable in sport/pe?

Nur - glad to oblige - but yes, I take your point about it not really being 'taught' in many primary schools (if they happen to have a music specialist or are a large school I imagine it is though. I'm at a private school so we do have all the non academic subjects properly taught by specialists but that's lucky, I realise that). No child should be made to sing solo if they don't want to - it shouldn't be humiliating to sing as a large group, should it? Nobody can hear them! But yes, I was a shameless exhibitionist as a child, as long as there was a stage involved (in other ways I was weirdly shy and awkward). I make my adult self cringe!

Oh it's horrible. Poor lass. Please ring school they should really think about this stuff more.
My little boy has just finished year 6 too. He also struggled - he's the youngest in his year which i think made a big difference at the start, and we're not local in a very local town. But he's blossomed too and made a little group of friends. The week before school finished one of the mums had a party for the group of friends and i thought yes finally! He's finishing in a really good place. Of course I should have wondered why they weren't doing it on the weekend school finished. Because there on facebook this weekend were photos of 10 of the boys in my son's class (including his mates) out for a meal. Only 5 other boys including mine not invited. You just think why? Why on earth be so mean? Luckily he didn't see. Twats

Because you can't get through life unable to do maths, but I've managed to get to 41 years without needing to play rounders.

It needs to be pointed out that schools are meant to have a bullying policy. A large part of bullying is being excluded. Encouraging them to make lists of who they think are best and leaving out certain children is exclusion. Using this format is basically school endorsed bullying.

I vividly remember when I was about 7 years old, in primary school, the teacher went round the class and asked everybody to name their best friend. I remember the sinking horror as I realised nobody was going to name me!

Yep, me too. I stoically announced that my cat was my best friend.

That's possibly the most stupid thing I've ever heard. We had a year book for our final year at secondary school that the students themselves organised but by that age we were all mature enough to make sure that even people we weren't that close with or were a little sorry to say it 'odd' had a full page of comments. Those aren't social niceties of anything other than the most advanced 11 year old and things like that should never be allowed to happen.

My child's school did photo's from past school events as a year book and I am so very thankful that my child was in a couple of the photo's as they were new in y3 and have been excluded by the other girls in the class for the last 4 years.
It would have totally destroyed her if they had to write who they were best friends with.
They were writing on each others shirts at the end of school yesterday and I was so worried that she would be the child with the unwritten on shirt but thankfully she did have a few names on hers although it was mainly teachers.

manic even in a group the people around you can hear if you sing out of tune as I know from being forced to sit next to my mother, whose voice is even worse than mine, in church for years and years and will tell you - in assembly, in the god awful "chorus" where the kids who can't sing are placed (without acknowledged irony) during the inevitabley musical (why do they always have to be musical?) primary school productions which are rehearsed endlessly and drive any but the most passive chorus member to naughtiness out of desperate boredom and mental discomfort. ..

When you don't join in you are pulled up on it and made to sing alone as punishment - if a kid couldn't do fractions and was not writing you wouldn't haul them to the front to do the sums on the white board without teaching them how to shame them into joining in, but apparently that was fine with singing at my primary. It just deepened my resolve not to sing in public - in year 7 I had a stand off with the music teacher who spent a double lesson making each child in turn sing kumbyya (or however that's spelt) solo in front of the class one by one to see if we were choir material .

I'm quite sure all that compulsory singing did a lot more harm than good!

There is an an amazing story about an American teacher who, every Friday, asked the kids to write down who they had played with that week and who they would like to sit next to the following week. She kept it secret and some parents complained as they thought she was being unfair. She explained to the parents that she's was looking out for the child who was never mentioned. The one who never got asked to play or anyone chose as their favourite. Because then she could make sure that child was looked after and helped. She did this because she was an amazing teacher. Who had worked at Colombine. And knew what isolation could do to a child. She inspired me and I do the same thing. It breaks my heart at times, but at least I know who needs a bit of extra tlc on a Monday morning.