To let Dd skive off tomorrow because of sports day?

[Cadela]

Honestly, the way the school organises it is horrendous. It’s FOURTEEN different ‘sports’ that you have five minutes at, and the kids have to perform in front of their peers so it’s already stressful. Plus there is no races, no medals, no winning!

Last year Dd was crying the whole way round because she was so worried about looking silly in front of the year 6s. She’s 7.

Usually I am very much of the let’s crack on and show ourselves we can do it! Mindset, but honestly Dd has been crying about this every bedtime and I just don’t want to force her to do it.

Part of resilience is learning where to draw the line. The most successful adults know when to put in the effort and when to give themselves a break.

I honestly think teaching your kids to power through discomfort is a really important lesson. I never let DD avoid anything, she used to be a really scared and anxious toddler, few years later she’ll walk into anything and give it a go and not care if she’s good at it or not.

There isn’t always an exit ramp, life will throw you shit you just have to deal with, get it over and done with. The more you avoid temporary discomfort the more anxiety will build. i was diagnosed with a GAD so I know all about how crippling anxiety about anything can be. I still rake over what I did/didn’t do but I don’t have the questions of “what if” to contend with.

If you have anxiety your baseline of where to draw the line is artificially low. We have poor perspective on what we can cope with.

DD will be missing sports day this year

I offered her the choice of dentist or sports day. She will was delighted to go to dentist instead

Tells you all you need to know really

In this scenario it's not artificially low though. It's sports day that's the issue, she's attending fine otherwise.

I would absolutely talk to her teacher about this before I'd keep her off. The day sounds like they've tried to make it fun rather than really competitive (with the "no races, no winning"). My mum kept me off for some things I was worried about at school. Although at the time I thought this was great, it would probably have been better if she'd sat down and talked with me and helped me to resolve whatever was worrying me.

This is my exact thinking. Dd never asks for days off, never pretends to be sick etc. But this has upset her so much the last couple of weeks that tonight at bedtime she was basically hysterical.

@Cadela I was a fairly unsporty child. I tried my best but was just a bit inept.

My DD was pretty similar. I think the best thing I did was let her know it didn't matter a jot. This may be an unpopular view here but I made no secret from early on that we really didn't mind if she wasn't good at PE as it was the least important of all her subjects.

That said, it wasn't necessary to ever keep her away from Sports Day because she knew it wasn't important and nothing to worry about.

I think if your DD is getting hysterical about something as unimportant as this then maybe you need to explore a bit to see if anything else is behind her fears. It does seem a disproportionate reaction.

Rather than just keeping her away I think it might be healthier to work out why she is so worked up about it and reassure her it really doesn't matter much.

Ha, sports day. My kids went during infants, because it was a couple of hours in the school field. They hated it, it was boring and hot, but only 2 hours and I could work from home and flex my hours around it. Then for juniors it becomes a full day event half an hour’s drive away, necessitating a full day off work for me to sit in a boring stadium while my kids scowl at me for forcing them to go. So we skip it every year. I take the day off anyway, but we spend it going to the seaside or to museums or paddle boarding. So much better - my kids look forward to it all year, and love all the subterfuge of pretending they’re racked with flu or whatever 😁

If my child felt like this over sports day I would definitely let them stay off school.

But next year if this happens again speak to the school in advance and see if they can come up with a solution.

I always let my kids off sports day. We went to the aquarium and out for lunch. They are pretty good workwise and v good at picking themselves up and having another go generally. One day is not going to have a formative effect on your daughter’s moral fibre and she’s miserable. Do something nice with her. She will always remember that.

@ClassicBBQ

tgat OLD argument has more holes than Swiss cheese!!

when kids who aren't good at maths have to stand on stage, on their own, doing maths 'in their head' and answering out loud, in front of all the school, a huge bunch of invited parents then it may start to be a fair comparison.

@Cadela there's part of me that thinks being made to go builds resilience, BUT there's a much bigger part of me that wants to protect her from it AND cannot see the point of it. Enjoy seeing her little face beam when you tell her! 🥳

Meh, suck it up, buttercup!

We all have to do crap we don't want to in life. Skiving off for sports day is a bit crap in my opinion. What about exams? Can the kids who turned up for sports day skive off exam day because they just don't like exams?
Where do you draw the line? What about kids who just don't want to go to school? Where does it stop?

But yet no one's questioning the very specific "looking silly in front of Y6" I find that more strange than just not wanting to do sports day because it's sports day.

Also, the crying the whole time last year, no one wants to mention that probably made her look more "silly" than just trying to have fun and coming last?

So? We all have to take lessons at school in subjects we hate, or are not good at. No-one suggests someone who finds maths torture should stay home during a maths lesson. Sport is no different, and kids do need to do more at school than just academic stuff.

What a strange attitude some of you have towards education!

It really isn’t. Being a parent is about raising a child to become the best adult they can be. Which includes resilience, perseverance, resolving their own problems, and turning up for things. I’m not saying she has to do all that at seven, but that it’s your job to think about what will help her most in the long term, not just how to make her happier tomorrow.

Missing one day of sport, which has no bearing on future success, is not remotely similar to missing exams or not going to school at all.

Keep her off tomorrow'
.no question. She's 7 ffs.if she's that upset .I never saw the point of forcing kids into something they hate.makes them hate it worse!9

Again, not the only I've raised but I wouldn't do it. People differ.

Points 2 and 3 are worthy of a bit of dig around for more info, in my opinion.

You say she was unhappy last year. Is she remembering that or you? (Possibly both?) If she doesn't seem worried then I'd send her in, but if she's totally unhappy then I'd keep her home, go and do something fun instead. I kept DS16 home when he was about 8 and miserable about it. He later got very proficient in the gym and at basketball.

Ofcourse it is. I sat naked on my bed and sweated at the thought of going to my friends birthday party (where I knew everyone and they are kind lovely people) also did it for going to work, also for just going to the shops at one point. Anxiety distorts your perspective. It’s the job of people who love you to give you a minute and then tell you it’s fine and you can do it. Not doing it on the other hand breeds more anxiety, avoidance breeds avoidance.

I acknowledge I am talking about clinical anxiety but I can see how children escalate given the right conditions.

You won’t always be there, thats the problem. I won’t always be there to say no on DD’s behalf, I won’t catch every negative experience she has. I have incredible anxiety about my DD and the normal female experience, it’s so important to arm girls well for the future. They need to know they are powerful, they can do it, even if it’s hard, they will survive and then hopefully thrive. But they can’t always rely on others to smooth the path for them. They have to lean on themselves.

To people saying that keeping her off school won’t teach her resilience, I call bullshit.
If, as an adult working in a job, someone suggested an ‘away day’ that involved an activity I knew I’d find embarrassing or humiliating, I’d refuse to do it. There is power in having the self esteem to say ‘no, I won’t be doing that. I’ll happily do xyz but I won’t go doing that’. I would want my daughter to grow up feeling she had the agency to say no to something that caused distress.
That, to me, is real resilience. Why do we not respect children’s feelings?
Forcing children to always do the things that cause distress coz it ‘makes them resilient’ has the opposite effect - it makes them feel unsafe and that they have to suck up feelings of distress and not complain - which is NOT the same as resilience!

Of course YANBU, it's just one day! My (very sporty) DC skipped many sports days purely because it was a useless badly-organised day. Not everything has to be an elaborate life lesson

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I don't know why people post when they're convinced they're right and not unreasonable.

FWIW I think you are veering into lawnmower parent territory. But you do you. Just don't post 'AIBU?' when you believe you aren't.

This
What message does that send?
You don't want to turn up today as it's something you don't like? Stay at home then.