To not want my DD doing PE in torrential rain!

[TheoriginalLEM]

DD is in year 6 and yesterday they did PE in the rain. Now i have no problem with her doing PE in the rain but this was ridiculous. She had a waterproof coat on (not a pe coat, big heavy coat) which was soaked through and i could wring her PE kit out that she had to bring home to be washed because it was so wet!

Now she is on the sofa with a stinking cold - now i know she didn't get the cold because of the rain but she started sniffling last night so i am pretty sure it hasn't helped.

Her teacher (who thankfully she only has for PE) made a big thing of telling them they would do PE in all weathers but this was ridiculous.

I got caught out in it yesterday too, but i was able to come home and have a warm shower straight away and dry off, not sit in my fucking wet vest and pants.

No point in complaining teacher is an arrogant twat so ranting on here instead.

if they were able to have hot showers after I'd have no problem with it but they will have been fucking miserable sitting with damp hair, bodies, underwear until they could get home. YANBU op. fwiw I love nothing more than a long walk in really heavy cold rain BUT I know I'm coming home to a hot shower and possibly a coal fire if I go to my mum's.

It's a good point about school PE not actually putting DC off sports and exercise.

When I was at school we had to do "cross country" which meant running around the local roads in a white polo shirt and blue athletic knickers - no skirts or shorts allowed. Seems ridiculous by today's standards and I absolutely hated it, to the point when I was invited to join the local Harriers club thing, I refused. It took me twenty years to get back into exercise and actually appreciate that running outside, in appropriate clothing, is wonderful. I can't run any more now and feel pissed off that I could have been making the most of those twenty years.

YANBU. There is nothing wrong with rain - if you are wearing waterproofs. Once it gets to your skin, you will be cold, which is unhealthy. Btw it is only in this country that people of all ages can be seen walking in the street without waterproofs in pouring rain. In other counries people protect themselves from rain. I would not want my children to do outside PE in bad weather either. And, btw, I also run in all weather, including in rain. When I feel like it. And wearing waterproofs.

Yabu. I don't see how you can be cold whilst doing Pe, even in the snow or torrential rain. Dd has been caught out in it loads of times, and shock horror hasn't immediately got changed. Sometimes it can be hours later, because as long as you keep moving you stay warm. However if you're wearing a coat, either you're sweating and too hot or moving so little you will be cold

If they are then sat in soaked clothes through to underwear for ages after in a cold classroom that's different. But if they're wearing Pe kit presumably they have dry clothes to change into.

I'm with OP and what I think has become the majority on here. It's fine to do PE in the rain if the kids are sensibly dressed and if they can change into dry clothes and warm up immediately afterwards. It is ludicrous to make the kids do PE in the very heavy rain we had yesterday, wear coats which will soak through and be useless for the journey home, and then let them sit in damp underwear for the rest of the day. It doesn't toughen them up and it has the danger of putting them off exercise for life.

My school was like this - I have memories of only too many painful afternoons freezing on the netball pitch in PE kit - the only concession to the weather we were allowed was a jumper and long socks, they wouldn't even let us wear warm tights. I wouldn't have minded if we had actually been able to run around and warm up, but the teacher used to concentrate on the stars on the hockey pitch leaving the rest unsupervised and most people used to stand around chatting and shivering. It would have been so much more sensible to arrange indoor exercise, or even a brisk walk with coats on. And it certainly achieved precisely nothing in terms of either toughening us up or encouraging us to like exercise.

Like fuck would I be willing to be out for an hour in the rain we had here the other day.

OP has made it clear that the usual rain is one thing, but staying out in a torrential downpour is not on - playing out in the rain is great when you can go straight home, have a hot bath and get changed right away into dry clothes but it's horrible when you are going to be damp and uncomfortable most of the day.

Lurked, it is ludicrous to say if you keep moving doing PE you will stay warm. There are plenty of victims of frostbite who can disprove that. And it is the nature of team games that you can't necessarily keep moving all the time.

It would help also if you'd read the OP. Her dd was wearing a coat at the instigation of the PE teacher, and it got soaked through. She did have dry clothes to change into, but the rain had soaked through to the children's underwear and, guess what, they didn't have spare dry underwear.

Wait until secondary, the teachers will shout at her and probably laugh too!

Yanbu. This kind of nonsense is what put me off exercise and made me hate PE. As for needing to toughen up kids, that's a laugh. Forcing the more "delicate" souls (and yes let's scoff at them, God forbid different kids have different needs or personalities) into freezing rain or relentless sports won't toughen them up, it'll make them miserable and less inclined to take part in future. ????Also yes, I think it was Cardiff Uni experts who proved a link - didn't they sit volunteers in buckets of ice water or something like that and measured variables, found it made them more likely to succumb to colds as it lowered the immune system?

And I wish people would stop pm blaming school PE for putting them off sports. We all did the same thing, we were all cold at some point or other, it wasn't just you, either you want to exercise or you don't, stop blaming other people for it.

Some people are so obtuse.

1. The OP has already said she doesn't mind her child doing PE in the rain but that this was torrential
2. The child then had to sit around until the end of in drenched clothing, with no opportunity to get dry and warm.

Honestly, it's neglectful. Nothing wrong with PE in the rain (as the OP herself said), the sitting around in cold wet clothing is horrible.

Also, as others have said (including the OP), no being cold doesn't CAUSE a virus, but it DOES help the virus take hold. Here's the explanation: www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/next/body/scientists-finally-prove-cold-weather-makes-sick/

OP. I would have a conversation with the school, including showing them literature, and ask that in future the children be permitted to get dry and warm following a downpour. OR, they simply do their exercise inside.

Life is hard and there are million things harder than keeping fit in the rain. I run in all weathers. So do millions of others.

Surely it is your choice to run in the rain? I'm assuming no one is forcing you. Life is hard but some things are avoidable in life and I think that getting soaking wet right through to your underwear and then having to sit in it for the rest of the day is definitely something avoidable. Some of the children could have had a long car journey home, resulting in unnecessary discomfort for the entire trip.
And actually, although the cold weather cannot cause a cold, being cold and wet for a extended period of time (an hour PE lesson for example) can actually temporarily lower your immune system, therefore making her more likely to get said cold.
YANBU

OoohMissDiane but it is pretty clear, even from this thread, that some people find having damp clothes mildly annoying, whereas some people find it horrific. I always assumed that everyone found it horrific until, as an adult, other people told me that they just found it 'annoying' rather than panic inducing.

I think you build up better immunity with continual exposure to being outside in all weathers. At least if you are youngish and healthy. I've never been so healthy as when I cycled to work each day and back, and often got drenched. Just kept a change of clothes at work and showered. Didn't have a single cold for about 2 1/2 years.

I also think its attitude, and if you make a big fuss about rain (September rain = really not that cold), you risk missing spending most of your life avoiding doing things and putting them off because of the weather.

I think as a species, we're actually evolved to deal with cold, wet weather.

Having a shower and a change of clothes is great, but at school you generally don't have those things.

Some schools don't have the luxury of being able to do PE indoors all the time, We have 14 classes and one hall - school in next village has 3 classes and one hall. Both supposed to deliver same amount of PE lessons in a week. We have one day per week when the music teacher uses the hall as there are no spare classrooms and we can only use the hall till 12 as it has to be set up for packed lunches.

No. For me it was school which definitely turned me from someone who loved sports and games into someone who hated them. It was horrible, judgmental and absolutely inflexible (this kind of thing shows one type of inflexibility). To this day if I try running or something I can still hear my over-critical high school PE teachers and I still feel that panic and shame. So we weren't all in the same situation. Some of us were terrible at sports. Some of us had unpleasant and inflexible teachers. Some of us got the confidence knocked out of us at a critical point. Such is the way of life of course, but you don't get to just dismiss people's experiences like that because they annoy you ... yes sports is still a sore point all these years on and of course a bit of rain in itself doesn't damage you but STILL

i remember running in the rain we got to go back to the school and have a hot shower before getting back into our clothing

i doubt the ops children had the same luxury?

(and yes it was a hot hot shower and the school was hot too we liked our comforts)

You are not being unreasonable, at all. I hate how any vaguely negative comment about PE on here is so often twisted into 'oh heavens, how will the little spoiled darlings ever cope in the real world' (yeah, the real world where you generally get to choose whether or not to go out in the pouring rain and not get changed afterwards.)

The OP's daughter's school doesn't have hot showers in the PE changing rooms?

OMG. Where is this place?

tbh I wasn't that bothered about showering when cycling to work but did so for the benefit of my colleagues. Left to my own devices, I would sit happily in wet clothes until I dried

inimitable could you link to any cases of healthy people getting frostbite through an hours exercise in normal uk temps? In particular cases during school Pe?

My dd would wet her underwear laughing at the idea of wearing a coat to participate in a Pe lesson. If underwear was actually soaked through and sat in for hours after, presumably the op would have mentioned the soreness this would have caused, as from extensive experience that is the main issue, not catching a cold.

I was going to say toughen up but then I remembered that when Ds is Doing PE or football training in torrential rain he is wearing proper sports kit (school specified rugby shirt/shorts/trackie bottoms are made of that breathable water resistant material as is the dri-fit base layer he wears under his football shirt. (He chose to go to drop in football last Saturday despite torrential rain.

The coat probably made it worse.