To think school competitions leave some children very sad?

[Orangeis]

We had an Eisteddfod on Wednesday (it's like a Welsh talent competition) and both dc got a prize so this post isn't sour grapes.

But both my dc have told me some children were sad as they didn't have any entries or some of their entries were a bit rubbish.
The dc are too young to do the entries alone, it's craft, photography etc that's to be done at home.

I wonder why the school can't do some class based entries as well to give the dc without parental input a chance. I know these things are a PITA sometimes, people work, some parents just can't engage for various reasons so it's not that I'm bashing them either.

Do your school try hard to be inclusive of everyone, or is this quite standard? I'm just feeling a bit sorry for some of the kids involved.

There's also been quite a few research studies that shows that extrinsic motivation for kids (eg winning prizes, rewards or even praise) makes kids perform worse in the long term and also makes kids less likely to actually enjoy the activity and persevere with it when it requires more effort.

Er, how can you celebrate some people's unique talents without leaving people out 🤔. Schools just can't win 😅🤣

I actually complained to school last year because I didn't agree with how the children were told who had won the easter bonnet contest (winning bonnet's hung on the classroom door) and then the parents weren't told who had won so we weren't able to prepare ourselves to deal with disappointed DC. I didn't think that was an appropriate way for 4/5 year olds to find out they'd not won a competition. The local vicar chooses the winner, and I laughed out loud when the head teacher told me he tries really hard to choose one that obviously hadn't been made by the parents.

Fair play to little Bob (not real name) but there was no way on God's green earth his parents hadn't made that hat.

It’s been shown over and over again that bullying and humiliating does not build resilience, it just causes depression. I hope you asked to speak to the head about why the school is deliberately humiliating a four year old.

I do think they have to have an eye to giving every child a chance to feel like they’ve shone at some point. Something genuine, not a small obvious pity offering.

So even if the kid is just good at, say, helping the teacher water the plants, that’s a thing. They get the helpful award, or the environment award or something.

Equally I don’t think things like sports which some kids will never ever be good at should be so disproportionately cried up compared to everything else - where the football team gets praised well above anything the academic kids, or kind kids, or creative kids do. Or the plain hard working kids. It’s not a good preparation for life, as in life it’s possible to find your niche for most people.

I agree with this. It’s so easy to say “oh it builds resilience”. No it doesn’t. That’s a lazy cop out response. People who’ve been treated with respect as children are far more resilient adults.

I didn't. I could see the girl's mum from across the field so I didn't want to step on her toes but you're right, maybe I should have. We always have to give feedback forms at the end of the year and apparently the head reads every single one so it might be worth doing so on that.

My Dad was really good with creative projects at home. Memorable homemade costumes (I was dressed as a rocket for Brownies one year and my Sister as Guy Fawkes with homemade hat and beard!). Easter masks, tudor house replicas, hedgehog art with actual 3D spikes, lots of crazy crap! Some we won, other's we didn't. My Dad worked full time in a factory manufacturing something to do with metal, we always knew what swarf was, stuck in his shoes. (Mum was a care assistant, long winded way of saying that we weren't rich). He was just genuinely creative and willing to give the time to do it.

In Secondary school I became generally frustrated and annoyed (as did my friends and others kids in class) that the student of the year awards were always the same people, year in, year out. It made us not want to go the extra mile and try to improve because those students always won so what was the point?

My parents never helped with things like this, we didn't have resources at home like glue and pens or even paper.
The teacher let me take scrap paper home but it was just a fact of life, people like me don't win competitions and people like little Tom and Jane who had perfect parents did win.

I remember feeling quite jaded on a dress up day where Jane came in with a tailor made outfit her mum had spent loads of time and money on. The teachers were all gushing Over it but didn't care about my tshirt with multiple badges on that I scoured the old birthday cards to have a 'spotty tshirt' I think It was probably pudsey day.

But you know, when it came to secondary school and I had to do loads of projects, and homework and sort out stuff like that, it made me really resourceful. I mean, I found all of our old virtual cards and took the badges to make spots, that's pretty resourceful. And I entered egg competitions and stuff with my measly offerings but it was my work. I knew I couldn't compete with Jane and Tom's parents but I wasn't competing against them. I was competing against Jane and I caught up pretty fast by year seven while she was still being babied in year 11.

I don't think my parents did anything wrong, by the way. I used to go to the local library for my homework even in year 3 when I was what? Seven? and I used to be able to find encyclopedias and other non fiction books and make really good (for a seven year old) attempts.
I even made a book out of paper but I couldn't stick it together so i ripped a hair bobble open and used the elastic to tie the pages together. You just get on, don't you?

I will say though, i buy way too much craft stuff for my kids now, and have enough pens to colour in my whole street!

Everyone is good at something - be that writing poetry, mathematics, swimming, foreign languages, running fast, looking after sick people, knitting, gardening, carrying heavy stuff, singing, whatever...

I'm all for competition, but schools ought to make sure that there are enough diverse competitions so that all pupils have an equal chance of doing well in at least one of them.

There's obviously always one child who is good at everything, and who is also a child of a teacher the most popular child (these will be the children who are always chosen to be Mary and Joseph), but there's not much we can do about that.

I do think it's healthy for kids to learn that on life they won't always win and that missing out or loosing is just part of life. It does build resilience.
However I do think that there should be activities across the year that are gives all the kids a chance to exhibit their talents, be it sport, creativity etc.

Our DS school do token star of the week etc, it's a given each child will win it throughout the year, makes it a tad pointless to me (and our DS once he has twigged) but they do it so no one is left out,

It doesn't have to be humiliating and disrespectful to come last, though, does it? Being last is not bullying FFS.

I'm shit at swimming but I remember the time my team did not have anyone for the 25m race at the school swimming gala so I volunteered. I knew I was going to come last but we got a housepoint or something just for participating. I did indeed come last by quite some margin and I still vividly remember everyone cheering as I reached the end. It was such a buzz.
I did similar in secondary school for the 300m, again knowing I was going to come last by a long way and once again feeling elated that I'd completed the race and everyone cheered and celebrated with me.

THAT is what treating people with respect looks like. It looks like celebrating their achievement (even if it's last place) and actively teaching the child that their effort is significant and more important than their ranking.

I mean, yes. Those experiences also mean I do not now participate in competitive sport because I know it's not a talent I possess but how do you know how good you are if you don't compare yourself to another? And why does realising "this is not my strongest skill" have to be a bad thing?

I think competitions are fine, and I'm speaking as a non-artistic, non-sporty person who has similar children. But I think there should be plenty of them so losing becomes less of a big thing because there's always another one to enter.

I do agree with child done, not parent done. However what about the child who does something really well and then doesn't win because they think the parent did it?
I've seen that happening.

When I was at primary school we had a new teacher join who did loads of competitions. We even had one to design a motif for the school-I've just checked and they still use it, which I'm finding stupidly exciting. No, I didn't design it, nor was it one of my friends.
She'd do 1-2 a term, and there would be normally a prize per year and an overall, or 2 overall (so 8 or 9 prizes in total). The prizes weren't massive, and I don't recall the same people winning them either-by accident or design I don't know. They were often quite different, so maybe they naturally had different winners. But I don't recall there being upset from anyone over not winning. I'm not sure I can even remember snide remarks.

I think it's fine for kids not to win in a fair competition, its a lesson in life.

I think competitions should be for school based activities though. There is absolutely no fairness if parents are getting involved and helping or completing activities/crafts and those sort of competitions shouldn't be allowed. Entries should be disqualified if there has been input from anyone other than the child.

I wonder why the school can't do some class based entries as well to give the dc without parental input a chance.

DC school did start doing this - perhaps mention it - they did suffer from a lack of parental engagement so maybe felt they had little choice.

Though DS did win easter bonnet parade in his previous English primary - mainly as it looked the best of ones that looked like parents hadn't helped - though he'd had some help - we tended to start them off give them material and let them get on with it. Did that with DD1 same school with a summer project teacher said it looked awful and hid it at back all the rest were clearly all parent creations- it really upset DD1 to point next year she refused to do the project.

Generally though there been enough competitions in enough areas that prizes were share out and no child won everything - which TBH is probably harder than it looks to achieve.

When I was in Y7, we had to bring in home-made instruments. I made a pan flute, by myself. I was disqualified because they said I had clearly had parental help! They even phoned my mum and my mum told me off too for cheating…even though she surely knew I hadn’t had help, considering she was, in fact, my parent…

It’s often children who struggle academically who do well in creative and sporting competitions. Should they not be allowed to shine as well?

YES! I had to judge a cake decorating competition at a school where I'm a governor and it was obvious which had serious parental 'support' and which had been done by the child (at least mostly) alone.

The one I chose wasn't the most 'professional' but the one I thought had been the child's own design and effort (it was decorated with a lot of fresh fruit and I made a point of saying I love fresh fruit, it's good for us and that's why it was my favourite cake).

It's not a bad thing knowing some you're in, some you're not. It's a life lesson.

Enfys1982 · Today 16:34

It’s often children who struggle academically who do well in creative and sporting competitions. Should they not be allowed to shine as well?

But it's not always is it? In my DC class there are 2 kids who are clearly the smartest / fastest / best at everything and 1 or 2 who likely have some sort of special needs like maybe dyspraxia and dyslexia or something like that. Those kids are clearly going to be the ones who come last in everything. There's a huge difference between not winning - my child is middle of the road in most subjects. So unlikely to win or come last. Totally different to being obviously last in everything which is just humiliating.

Fair competition is good. You wouldn’t let your dad run the 100 metres for you, so he shouldn’t do other competitions for you either.

There was a competition at DDs primary. A dad entirely made his DDs entry. Then he was extremely smug that he had won (beating a load of 6 year olds) and then started going on how it showed how brilliant his DD was.
I think some people just want their children to win at any cost because they think it makes them look like a brilliant parent.

I think you’ve got the answer in your post - BOTH of your Dc won a prize in this parentally involved competition - so next year let the kids do it alone and give somebody else a chance.
kids get over this stuff super quickly - life is full of competition and they need to learn to cope with life - in my experience it’s the parents who Seethe for ages, the kids are so over it by the next day.

The one that upsets me is the walk/bike/scoot to school that's coming up soon. All the children who make the effort to get to school without being driven get a prize each day they participate. My issue is my child can't participate because of ME. I'm disabled and need to park in the disabled bay near the front door, we can't even park near the school and walk the last little bit (like other children who live too far away to walk/bike/scoot the whole journey) because of my mobility issues so she misses out and it makes me feel like sh1t. I fully support the scheme and am all for the children being more active and reducing pollution I just feel like crap that I'm the one stopping my child getting a prize because we just can't physically join in 😔 I don't want the school to stop the scheme, I don't want them to stop awarding the children for taking part, there isn't really an answer to it I just wanted to offload that I feel like a sh1t parent and this seemed the thread to do it on!

Yes! I realised this when my kids were in infants for the Easter Bonnette parade. I foolishly thought it was just an opportunity for them to get creative and they turned up brimming with pride with their weirdarse glitter fests perched on their heads, only to discover everyone else's parents had commandeered the task. One kid had the most realistic Easter bunny on his head I have ever seen.