Awful School sports day

[Seniorschoolmum]

I’ve just endured my ds’s sports day. My ds loathes sport. He has been stressing about it for weeks. He is the youngest, slowest & smallest in his year. He had to take part in every race and came last in all except one.
This was in front of 300 people.
He was understandably humiliated and very upset, and it showed. The school head walked across to him and told him to stop making a fuss, in front of everyone.
Six weeks ago, his year did SATS. In a class room, not in front of an audience of 300. Those children who weren’t very good were provided with counselling g, two terms of mindfulness sessions and every support.
I wholly agree with that support.

But the head’s behaviour this afternoon was nasty, spiteful, ignorant and unhelpful. I am so angry I can barely speak. I feel like pulling ds out of school for the last 3 weeks of term and wrecking her attendance figures on purpose.

I will calm down in a bit but honestly....

Some of you are utter cunts and sound just like the 'mean, cool girls'.

God I'm glad my kid won't grow up in the UK.

Sorry, others said it more delicately than me but I feel your and your DS's pain op.

Perhaps it is an opportunity for him to learn how to be better.
Can you teach him the essentials—how to make an explosive start, work on his stride, strength, cardiovascular fitness etc.
He'll be leaps and bounds ahead of the others by next year.
Kids don't have to just "accept" being rubbish at sports, even though the school won't teach them how to improve.

Be better? We aren't cavemen!

What have cavemen got to do with being better at sports?

School is about learning, but PE teachers in my experience fail miserably in this department.
If a kid doesn't know how to race, teach him. If the school won't do that, then (as quite often happens) it falls to the parents.

Thing is it is usually less of a problem at primarily school but St secondary school the difference in development is huge. It's like having a single glazed race with a load of dogs and you have chihuahua, alsatians and greyhounds racing together. It seems that even now there is little attention payed to scaling in PE and making competition meaningful.

I can confidently say if you were at my dcs secondary school and you'd spent a year learning how to run, you would not come last!

WOW - That really would make me flip.
I think if that we're my child, come Monday morning I'd be storming into the heads office and making it VERY clear if he ever repeated that ever again I'd knock his fucking block off.

I am just seething here.
I was bullied, victimised all the way through school by both children and teachers due to a disability and can confirm that even now at 50yrs of age I still have deep open wounds from the memory.

That sounds like a rubbish sports day.
Your poor ds.
I would write an email to the school about the head's comment and why you didn't like it.
Then I would keep your ds off school for future sports days.
My dm did it for my dsis not for me but that's a different story

Some people on here need counselling if they genuinely feel this much anger about a kids race.

No wonder PE staff get such a hard time if their job is to make traumatised parents feel better about themselves. Newsflash - you need to sort that out yourselves.

Big difference between coming last once and coming last every single fucking time in front of everyone all day. I would be very angry. Of course your child was humiliated, anyone would be. I would definitely speak to the Head and ask if he might like to run the SATS results like that. Fuckwit. That shit ruined sport for me for years.

No explanation given for the seven races yet...

sandy that's a good post.
I remember hating sportsday.

It’s not hard to structure sports day to suit everyone surely. Kids can choose which events to take part in so the competitive sporty kids can race each other. Fun team events for the others and an opt out for the non sporty who can help the younger ones, serve drinks etc.

You may not like this opinion. I say this as a parent of teens having been through the usual trials of sports, tests etc. We need to stop the wrapping in cotton wool, teach resiliance and picking yourself up from situations. I wonder how much of a deal you made of this? Did you make light of it and say well done you took part and moved on or did you go all out comforting and fussing. Kids need help to deal with and realise that things don't always go their way. Particularly to help them as teens and into adulthood. By the way I don't agree with the headmaster's words.

'Oh and he wasn't humiliated. No one gives a shiny shit about anyone apart from their own kids.'

That's not true. The above poster obviously feels this way, but lots of people will feel empathy for a child in the situation outlined in the OP. I was at a sports day yesterday where a couple of girls were shouted at for sitting in the wrong part of the field ( the teacher had obviously got very worried when she couldn't find them), & I felt sorry for them even though they weren't mine.

Basic empathy.

Mind-blowing concept, I know.

No wonder PE staff get such a hard time if their job is to make traumatised parents feel better about themselves

PE staff often get a hard time because provision for sport in schools is handled so poorly.

Just do a sickie on sports day for MH reasons and say he's having panic attacks. They can't really argue with that. Breathing is essential when running.

I feel for your son. Another person who couldn't run fast here. Is he overweight? I think PE teachers do tend to pick on overweight kids. I had the same until I lost weight and improved a bit at sport, but I didn't have to take part in stuff I knew I was crap at, so I just tended to throw stuff on sports day.

I think if you are one teacher with a class of 30, 20 of whom have various reasons for not wanting to do PE, it's a bloody hard job. There is a curriculum they have to stick to. I also don't think their job is to make kids love exercise for life either, although they can help. Parents are far more influential, or should be (unlikely in the vast majority of cases on this thread).

I also don't think their job is to make kids love exercise for life either, although they can help

They absolutely shouldn’t be turning kids off sport/exercise for life.

Ours was a total shitshow. Some kids competing, the rest kettled in pens being shouted at to ‘have more fun’. According to the head in briefing the day after, it went really well and, apparently, we all ‘remember the fun of our own school sports days. The memories will be FANTASTIC’.
Erm. No.
Sorry about your son op.

Thing is I am a physical person as are my boys. I work on building activity into daily life. I know it's hard doing PE as a PE teacher but there is still the hangover of team sports and competition being the be all ans end all not a bonus who want it.
Having said that, one of the secondary schools does enable pupils to choose so they could avoid any team or contact sport while still doing PE. I approve of options like ballroom dancing because not all exercise needs to be pounding yourself!

I am sure the vast majority of PE teachers don't go into teaching thinking they are going to put kids off for life. If you have a child who is adamant that they hate running, and you try and encourage them to run or that they can't catch a ball and you try and teach them, but they don't get it straight away, aren't willing to try again and then start mucking about, it must be bloody hard.

Anyway, its the head at fault here rather than the pe staff.