Would you say something?

[Whatabeatifulnoise]

Dd1 is in her final week at her school.
During the year she has held two responsible roles giving up her time to raise money and support younger children in the school.
So this week she came home from school to say that certain groups of children who help have been given a reward but those who do her roles have not.
Now I accept this is down to the teacher who has responsibility for these roles arranging it.
However I am reluctant to say anything even though she feels it is unfair.
So MN jury what do you think please?

Why did she take on the roles she did? Did she do it to be an active member of the school or did she do it for accolades?

That is probably a good way to play it with her.
The first role she applied for as it was something that she felt would be a good experience for later in life.
The second role was one she was selected to do. She was disappointed that she wasn't selected for the other role of prefect which incidentally is one of the roles receiving the reward.
So I suppose in some ways the prefects being rewarded seems like a kick in the teeth. Especially since in the past all those taking on additional responsibility received the same reward. This hasn't happened this year.

I didn't mean that response to sound as arsey as it did.

There is a good lesson for her to learn here - lot of things she does in life will be thankless. It's not an easy lesson to learn.

This happens to so many children. I like you would be annoyed and feel it's unjust but it's best to say nothing. I agree that it's a good life lesson.

It was so hard for her when she missed out on being prefect. She was really disappointed and upset as she thought she would be selected.
I managed to convince her that the role she was given was more suited to her and as important.
Yet now of course she feels that it clearly isn't in the schools eyes.

It IS a good life lesson but it still sucks.
Just remind her of all the good she has done, and how many people she has helped in her roles, and that that is more important than receiving some trumpery award from the school, who clearly don't value her services as they should.

Funny, was just talking to my Dad about stuff like this earlier tonight - had to say much the same thing! He didn't do the things he did for the awards/accolades either, but it still stings when no one appears to notice or care that you've done a good job - he (and your DD) just have to remember that someone somewhere has had a better time because of what he/your DD has done.

Encourage her to believe that self-worth comes from within and that one of the greatest gifts a person can possess is resilience.

I know she needs to be more resilient. I guess it will come as she matures.

It will develop over time and once she has it it will be her greatest armour in life. It's hard to see them so disappointed though, especially when they have been unfairly treated.

Don't say anything. We do the right thing because it's the right thing to do, not because we want to be rewarded for it. This is an important life lesson for her.

Yeah these things do rankle. At my primary I always had a feeling that we weren't quite as good as other families and rarely got picked for anything. I can remember one time bring only one of about 6 children selected for some honour or treat. Don't even remember what it was. But I do remember being told that another child needed to take my place because of some issue or other. That is pretty much my only memory from Primary and it hurt.
Anyway I will let it go but I feel the school has handled it badly. There is even loads of photos of our brilliant (another superlative) children trampolining in the school newsletters.
I won't be letting dd see it.

The problem is thumb that another group of kids were recruited to do a different role and there has been an overlap in responsibilities. Although they haven't received any reward or recognition either.

I think you should try very hard not to let your memories of things rankling as a child influence how you feel about your dd's disappointment now. Chances are she will pick up on your feeling emotional about this even if you don't say so in actual words. It won't be helpful to her: she needs someone cheerful and brisk to say "yes, I see you are disappointed but these things happen, you've still done a good job and that is what matters".

That is what parents are for: to help us see things through the eyes of someone older and wiser who has left our childish reactions behind.

Later on, there will be times when somebody gets the job she wanted and she will need the stamina to sound positive and cheerful in the next job interview. There will be times when the boy she thought was going to ask her out gets off with somebody else, and she will have to be gracious about it. This is her training time and you are the coach.

Sometimes ime whole families can develop a culture of "we are hard done by, they look down on us, everybody is against us", and that can actually be very damaging to a child's chances in life. The ethos you want them to take away is, "in our family we dust ourselves off and pick ourselves up again, because that's who we are".

Tbh I have remained positive with her. As I did when she was so upset about not being a prefect. Also to be honest life has moved on and in some respects we are probably fairly well respected generally at school.
Obviously I know my Dd hasn't been singled out so it isn't the same.

It's very hard to see your child disappointed. My own dd feels that she gets overlooked for the weekly class reward, yet she is so helpful and reliable in school. Often the 'difficult' kids, who do one good thing during the week, get lots of praise, while the ones who are consistently kind and helpful get taken for granted and not always noticed. I get that schools are trying to use positive reinforcement to encourage permanent improvements in behaviour from some pupils, but the quiet ones are still only young and need noticing too.

I try to minimise it to my dd and make out that these things are not important, but to small children they are. I don't want my dd to get the message from school that other people are always more important than she is.