To ask if you can think of an excuse which will get 11yo off PE for the rest of term?

[HelloKittyGirl]

Just that, basically. What would get her off games for a few weeks?

Sheer entitlement. Your daughter needs to learn to take the rough with the smooth. Life isn't all doing exactly what you want.
Plus lying is a terrible lesson to teach her.

And what is the plan when she doesn't want to be involved in a subject in year 8 onwards?

I'd help DD get out of it now if she asked me - she has to play hockey, it looks remarkably like my school experience! Though I don't think her games teacher is a sadist, which does help.

Child will be getting out of swimming - I assume that's not done in a lake so why does the season make a difference? Nor is it a team sport lie hockey.

For the sanctimonious on this thread, I never skived off anything else, and I was academically successful, have a good career and am even a fit adult. I just didn't do any physical activity if I could avoid it till my late twenties because I was so scarred by school PE.

So many perfect parents on this thread I personally don't agree with lying about it but it's PE for goodness sake. You'd think this mum wanted to take her daughter out of education full stop.

I’m not sure walking two and from school is enough exercise for a teen - or an adult really. Isn’t it important to get your heart rate up.

Also as pps have said, it’s the team element that’s also necessary, and the fact that you can’t miss a subject you just don’t like.

I don’t think it’s a problem from time to time, but skipping it always seems a bit limiting

I hated PE with a vengeance. Total waste of time when I could have been learning more French, Spanish or history by myself without distraction in a classroom.
Possible middle ear problems ( be vague)
Headaches
Digestive problems, abdominal pain
Joint problems going to be investigated.

My mum did this for me she was basically trying to be cool /friend mum and i thought it was great at time, i dont now it took me to late 30s to really enjoy exercise i always thought i wasnt good at it thats why mum let me off doing it. And i shouldnt do it because i wasnt any good. ive learnt now it doesnt matter how good u r, its about the just taking part and enjoying the feeling of it. Which im feeling now just wish i started earlier

@HonoreDeBallsack I didn’t say that people who don’t do PE end up on benefits! I was referring the the OP’s attitude of if you don’t fancy doing something just make up a bullshit excuse to get out of it. You’ve completely misread my post and missed the point

@Flickflak

What awful parenting. Your daughter has no hope with you teaching her to lie and to break the rules. Disgusting.

my mum wrote me loads of excuse notes to get out of having to do pe because i didnt want to and strangely enough i didnt grow up to be a feckless evil drug dealer , i have oddly enough worked since i was 18 years old . and my own dd is complimeted on her good manners and is loved by her teachers , so you might want to rethink your ridiculous statement

@happypineapples

So many perfect parents on this thread I personally don't agree with lying about it but it's PE for goodness sake. You'd think this mum wanted to take her daughter out of education full stop.

“But its PE”

And that’s why we are an obese nation! Physical exercise is very important.

@ThoseFestiveLights

I’ve always let my kids bunk off PE. I utterly hated it. Found it humiliating.

Bad circulation works for winter. In summer they just bunked off to go to the quiet room or library.

I think it’s wrong to force kids to do PE.

I'm interested in how much sport/exercise you (and others who are happy for their children to miss PE) have gone on to do as an adult, and how much importance is placed on being active in everyday life.

@Drunkpanda

Child will be getting out of swimming - I assume that's not done in a lake so why does the season make a difference? Nor is it a team sport lie hockey.

Swimming was a 'winter sport' at my school. Going around for the rest of the day with wet hair in the cold wasn't pleasant (and for some reason they used to make us leave the changing rooms attached to the pool in bare feet and put our shoes and socks on outside the building standing in the cold, but that was probably just my school...)

I'm ambivalent about PE. True, being a late developing ND person team games were a complete loss but I did learn some physical literacy despite it all being geared toward ball games and fast-twitch reflexes.

But I can honestly say I learnt far more about teamwork in an orchestra than in any PE game. And it is lousy at actually teaching children physical literacy.
Also don't remember doing a single PE lesson after term 1 in yr11 - non of the other girls wanted to! Being seen as not being afraid of your body and getting sweaty was seen as super uncool.

I lift, swim and run as an adult and I had a 'round' number of swimming hours at secondary school.
Having said that is it 'just' the cold or is there a deeper underlying unease to it - this needs to be addressed. But PE still lets down so many people - if you have a disability or injury - forget it - you are essentially a set dressing

Plus I used Sports Days as practice for being dead.

Would it not be better for her to have a talk to the PE teacher and explain her anxiety - they may be able to help

My PE teacher was a vile sadist who liked humiliating girls who were crap at team sports. She also weighed and measured us in public, and got her "favourites" to call out everyone else's weight. This wasn't an issue for me as I was a completely "normal" weight - but it was absolutely mortifying for the one girl who was significantly overweight. I still remember the bitchy girls calling out her weight, and the sneery PE teacher saying "ooh, yes, a bit ... cuddly, aren't we?" She also had a habit of talking to us about "leakage from your ... bits while you are running". No, no, NO.

There is no way I would have "explained my anxiety" about anything to her. I wasn't anxious about PE. I just loathed it with every fibre of my being. Fortunately my mum was sensible she might also have said it was a waste of school fees

@Invisimamma

A walk too and from school, unless it's 5 miles each way, really isn't plenty of exercise. What other physical activity does she do? This isn't setting a good example that you can just opt out of things you don't want to do.

PE at school isn't necessarily enough exercise for the less sporty either though. I wasn't sporty so barely moved in most sports.

@Iggly what about the people who end up obese in part because they found school PE so awful that they assumed all physical exercise was similar and avoided it from the moment they were no longer forced to do it?

I'm interested in how much sport/exercise you (and others who are happy for their children to miss PE) have gone on to do as an adult, and how much importance is placed on being active in everyday life.

I did everything I could to get out of PE, down to forging notes from my parents and getting my ears pierced and pretending to be sick. I simply couldn't bear the communal showers and changing room bitching.

These days I run 3-5 km three times a week. Used to 10 km 4-5 times a week, but I developed adult onset asthma and had to cut way back till it was brought under control. Trying to build back up now.

@DietrichandDiMaggio I'm actually a bit obsessively fit now, but that's only because I have found ways to keep fit that I love. Even when I was a child/teenager, I walked several miles every day with dogs, because I loved walking. I also loved playing tennis and cricket with my dad and my siblings at home. School sports were the issue, not fun things that also keep you fit.

"I'm interested in how much sport/exercise you (and others who are happy for their children to miss PE) have gone on to do as an adult, and how much importance is placed on being active in everyday life."

I hated PE at school, but cycled as a teen. Quite slowly and badly, but I wasn't a couch potato the whole time. As an adult the gym and now jogging. I jog very slowly and have been pretty bad this winter, but again I'm making an effort.
PE put me off being active for so many years. I just can't do sports and forcing me to do it doesn't help anything.

PE was positively counter-productive for me (and clearly lots of other people on this thread): in my twenties i made it a point of principle never to do any physical activity because I was an adult and didn't have to. Just before I turned 30 I bought a bike and started cycling to work, and now (when I'm very old) I do cycling, yoga, fitness DVDs and Pilates. During the lockdowns I made DD do Jillian Michaels DVDs with me: it's not that I don't think physical activity is important.

But if it were ever a condition of any job I applied for that I had to play lacrosse, I'd decline it. There's "bits of your job you don't like" and there's "stuff you wouldn't do even if the alternative were starving in the gutter" and all team sports are in that second category for me.

Do you think any of our kids want to get up early, study hard , participate in swimming lessons, do sports days when they come last etc?? No, so why on earth would you stop a child being part of school life to sit in a library on their own? What lesson are you teaching them at 11? That mum will get you out of it for no reason. Life is not like this out of school so you are being really quite unkind to suggest to your daughter that you can opt out of stuff you don’t like and that mum will support this!

I hated PE. Not because of the exercise but because of the relentless bullying because I wasn't good at throwing or catching or running fast. I took every single opportunity to get out of it, whether that meant bare-faced lying or just simple truanting.

Hopefully schools now have more robust anti-bullying policies than they did in the 90s.

I now go to the gym 3/4 times a week, walk to and from work and go horse riding twice a week, so it was really nothing to do with laziness. Just self-preservation. I really hope your DD isn't being bullied OP.