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?

Migranes are a ridiculous excuse out of PE, especially if your daughter is then sitting in the library reading and doing homework!

My dad has suffered with debilitating migraines his whole life and the eyes are the first to be affected so reading and working in the library when you have a real migraine would be impossible. And my dad is incredibly sporty and played team sports all his life despite migraines

Give her crutches, tell her not to put any weight on one foot and say she has a cartilage tear in her ankle and is waiting for surgery. She can see what it's really like being incapacitated and make her future decision on PE based on that. She'll get plenty of exercise hauling herself around on the crutches!

@Teenylittlefella

"Not doing PE is not the same as not doing maths. It just isn't. Other lessons don't involve ritual humiliation"

Other lessons can and do involve ritual humiliation. If you can't read, or spell, how much fun do you think English is? Or history, geography, etc? If you are socially phobic, drama can be horrific. If you have memory problems, content heavy lessons are humiliating.

You were just lucky that the thing you found hard didn't underpin access to every subject.

Absolutely this!

OP I was overweight and PE ground my tiny bit of self esteem into the gutter. They weighed us regularly also. I was jeered by others when my turn was a wash out. I embarrassed myself routinely. Eventually my mom signed me out that god. I have a degree and a masters and never 'tried' this in any other subject. Being a teenager is hard enough. If PE is making them miserable sign them out

I skipped PE for two years by volunteering as a library aide one year and as an office aide for another year.

Other girls in my class used: Broken toe
Low blood pressure (causes dizziness)
Period cramps
Religious exemption (can't undress in public)

@XelaM

Migranes are a ridiculous excuse out of PE, especially if your daughter is then sitting in the library reading and doing homework!

My dad has suffered with debilitating migraines his whole life and the eyes are the first to be affected so reading and working in the library when you have a real migraine would be impossible. And my dad is incredibly sporty and played team sports all his life despite migraines

Depends on how you’d migraines affect you. My dd also had debilitating migraines but they don’t affect her ability to read. Standing up makes her vomit, but sitting/lying down she can read. She is also very sporty, she rides competitively and plays team sports, but when she’s in a cluster attack they take her out of those things for a week or two at a time.

@OhGingleBells

Sorry - meant to add that I actually did have a spell of regular migraines in year 7, assumed to be brought on by the combination of hormones and the stress of transitioning to secondary school!

Then proceeded to continue to suffer from migraines on convenient occasions the whole way through secondary…..

If she’s never had one just scroll through the NHS page and choose a combination of symptoms to describe if anyone asks. Doctors aren’t interested and anyone who has had one will definitely understand why she is trying to avoid ‘triggering’ one!

Ds recently saw a doctor with headaches - he was having an MRI in less than a week. I wouldn't make medical shit up.

People on this thread are crowing about the importance of exercise but I swear, my PE teachers had no interest in that. It was fucking humiliating being the slowest person in the class, trying your best while your teammates are aggressively screaming at you to hurry up because it's your fault the team is losing. I'm dyspraxic so I can't catch a ball, I can't jump over a hurdle, I can't throw straight and I can't remember a dance sequence, never mind execute it without tripping over my feet. Now I walk and I use my spin bike at home. Nothing complicated, no fancy movements or sequences or jumping around.

To the people frothing at the mouth about overweight children: have you never heard the phrase "you can't out-train a bad diet"? Exercise alone doesn't do much for weight. Even if you force all of these poor kids to suffer through PE, it will do absolutely fuck all if they are constantly overeating in between those one-hour lessons exercise should be about engaging in enjoyable movement for overall health (mental and physical) and nothing to do with weight.

It's a great example to set. As an adult your boss can tell you to do more calculations, ask you to rewrite your report. They can't tell you to do laps around the car park and play hockey with people that hate you. Adults aren't forced into exercise, secondary age children should also be given that dignity and autonomy.

Meh. My mother privately educated us and considered that meant she could take us out of school every Friday to drive to a country manor house where we had horses.

Long term suspected labyrinthitis.

Our PE teachers were sadists. Except for swimming in the summer I loathed it, and wouldn’t blame anyone for wanting to duck out.

If you seriously do this then that is very bad parenting. PE is good for all sorts of life skills - learning how to win modestly, learning how to lose graciously, how to be part of a team, how to work together etc etc. Plus do you want to encourage her to lie? You’d be setting a terrible example. Just don’t.

We always used to say we were Off, which was a euphemism for being on your period. Also just remembered my incredibly posh lax teacher in her tiny kilt booming at me saying by my calculations you have been menstruating continually since the Middle Fourth! 🤣

@JayAlfredPrufrock

And if it was maths. Or English?

But it's not?

@ConsiderablyRicherThanYow

It's a great example to set. As an adult your boss can tell you to do more calculations, ask you to rewrite your report. They can't tell you to do laps around the car park and play hockey with people that hate you. Adults aren't forced into exercise, secondary age children should also be given that dignity and autonomy.

I think I agree with this. I’m an active sort, trail running, hill walking, cycling…but I’m not sporty. I couldn’t give a toss for sport, competition or the enforceable taking part in sports and physical activities I don’t bloody like and am no good at. PE at school was horrible.

@Whydoiwearsomuchleopardprint

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!

But as an adult you can opt out of stuff you don't like? Or you at least you can aspire to and that's good! I just don't understand the logic of teaching kids they have to grit their teeth and do things they hate. Especially when there's other things available to get the same benefits. (In this case healthy lifestyle through other exercise she does enjoy.)

What are we saying? That freedom of choice is a myth? That we don't have choices in life? That we've just got to suck shit up. Even if we hate it and are just going through the motions? How depressing!!!
In actual fact often life isn't like that at all. Eg I went freelance so I could choose my own hours/ only do work that I'm good at/ interested in rather than work i feel obliged to muddle through because it's in the narrow job description.
I want to teach my kids they can choose their own future and follow their own interests. And yes, while they are young they are still in a position work towards that. They can do anything they want with their lives!!! Why wouldn't they? Surely that makes for a happier life?

I wouldn't make medical shit up

Best wishes for your DS's outcome, Drunkpanda, and no I wouldn't make this kind of stuff up either - but people do, and amusingly we're even had the inevitable "Long Covid" suggestion on here

Of course, on other threads it's then said that posters are hideous even to suggest that a parent would invent a child's illness ...

Tried and true excuses that work:

Inner ear infection - balance and fast movement/ disorientation
Greenstick fracture in limb/ foot
Growth plates fracture

@Teenylittlefella

"Not doing PE is not the same as not doing maths. It just isn't. Other lessons don't involve ritual humiliation"

Other lessons can and do involve ritual humiliation. If you can't read, or spell, how much fun do you think English is? Or history, geography, etc? If you are socially phobic, drama can be horrific. If you have memory problems, content heavy lessons are humiliating.

You were just lucky that the thing you found hard didn't underpin access to every subject.

That's a fair point. I was dreadful at maths too (it's likely that I have dyscalculia) and I can testify to how miserable I felt in maths lessons.

However, I think there's a lot more acceptance and support in place for kids who have difficulties with certain academic subjects.

And I'd say that the fact that 'PE doesn't underpin access to every subject' kind of indicates that it's not actually that important...

Exercise is important. Sport is not. There should be non-team sports opportunities for kids who aren't 'sporty' to participate.

It's awful if people had horrible PE teachers when they were kids, but unless people have kids currently at secondary school who are reporting the same problem I wouldn't assume schools are still the same as when we were kids. I went to primary school in the 70s and they still smacked kids then. Thankfully things have moved on a bit. I worried before my eldest started at her comp but I've been very pleasantly surprised and she's in Year 13 now.

It's not like in the film Kes any more

@Katya213

I used to ask my dad to write me a note to get off PE, he never would. I just hated the shame of always being picked last or the girl doing the picking turning to the teacher and saying”do we have to have her?” 😂

i used to get the groans and huffing when they were forced to have me as i was the last , i was despite being slim build useless at pe which was why i hated it so much , it wasnt long before i didnt even bother to try to make any effort as i just didnt want to be doing it rounders was the best as i used to be a fielder and put myself so far out on the field that if the ball ever did come anywhere in my direction i was too far out to catch the bloody thing ,

luckily there was another girl who hated pe and wasnt any good at it either , the day before we would conferr and she would say she was getting her mum to write and note and why didnt i do the same , we would have a lovely time sitting on the edge of the field watching them all shreiking away whilst they flailed away at each others ankles with the hockey sticks , the one and only time i remember pe being fun was when my very athletic mate who had the physic of serena williams deliberaltely smacked her hockey stick at full bore into one of the popular girls , an irritataing little cow who sneered at everyone who wasnt pretty and wonderful like her , she promply collapsed screaming and clutching ankle and had to be helped off limping by the pe teacher .

Well my year 11 is not doing PE this year due to recovered eating disorder, anxiety and constant panic attacks in changing rooms as crowded!

I actually think her PE dept are relieved and we go for a walk every eve plus lots of walking to and from school etc, am I doing the right thing? Who knows are we ever we just try our best eh!!!

Well that’s life we don’t always enjoy what we need to do
No wonder teachers get frustrated if they are having to deal with this sort of nonsense

If I had a child I'd happily get her off PE for all the sports lessons for that one week a month.
The other three would be participating.