How to handle sports day this year?

[cadburyegg]

Sports day is next month and my ds7 is already worrying about it, bless him, and saying how much he hates it. He is the smallest in the year (0.4th centile), he’s hypermobile, he’s always last. My ds10 doesn’t much like it either but will take part begrudgingly.

I have considered taking ds7 out for the day considering he hates it but ds10 would be upset at the unfairness of it unless I take both of them out.

I was always terrible at sports and was last at everything. I wonder if there is a better way of dealing with things other than telling them “it’s not the winning that counts, it’s the taking part!” Surely making kids do races that they hate (my ds7 cried during his last year) isn’t actually very good for their development? Is there a happy medium between taking them out for the day and making them participate in everything? Can I tell them that actually they don’t have to do certain races? My two I think wouldn’t mind doing the egg and spoon / bean bags etc but the running and relay upsets ds7 in particular.

Or am I setting them up for a complete lack of resilience?!

My mum used to let me have the day off. I'd definitely speak to the teacher, hopefully schools are a bit more understanding nowadays.

Like others, I am still angry with school sports lessons for not actually teaching us anything. If you weren't naturally good at something, you were ignored and made to feel useless. Turns out I can run, I'm just not built to be a sprinter - and the one day we did cross country they didn't bother to teach us about breathing or pacing. You were either naturally good or humiliated.

Couple that with the sadistic rules on tiny blue skirts in mid-winter for hockey, and the fact that the PE teacher basically ignored you if you weren't good enough for the school teams - no wonder we hated it and avoided exercise as a result.

This is the approach I took to myself when I was a kid. I was so monumentally bad at sports that I had to do remedial PE, but was good academically. I used to think that every day was like sports day for kids who struggled with spelling, reading etc.

I’d send them in. One day of struggle won’t scar him for life.

My experience of sports day is dd ending up in a&e every year. The school just did not do enough to protect medically fragile children during the event. It’s not about accepting that someone had to come in last.

We started keeping her home. I was so happy when she aged out of it. Even happier when she aged out of physical education classes entirely. She hasn’t had a severe asthma attack since. Funny how not having an authority figure pressuring you to ignore your bodies warning signs helps with that.

This conversation comes up every year and my kids have gone all through school now and I still haven’t changed my opinion. For most kids doing something you don’t like and aren’t good at for one day a year will not damage you. Your parents teaching you that the way to deal with fears is to refuse to face them does damage you IMO.

OP in your situation with a child with a medical condition I would talk to the school about alternative ways they can participate.

Let him stay home, tidy his room, do homework etc. not fair to take him out.

My 20 year old still moans at me about making her do a sports thing at school 11 years ago!!
It only took half an hour - it was a race and she got a medal.

I'd still make her do it - even though she's still jokingly whining about it.

She is very resilient!

I was rubbish at running and always came last but didn't cry, I don't even remember caring much. You can't be best at everything. I don't think opting out of stuff is the right answer.

Hi OP,
I’m sorry to hear Sports Day is tough for your family.

This is kind of linked, so maybe of some relevance, but I was a child who experienced very high anxiety about school trips. My Mum responded to that by either trying to come on them as a helper, or occasionally letting me miss a few and just stay at home, she’d tell school I was ill. It was strange, as I did actually want to go, and was aware I seemed different to the majority of children and felt very embarrassed and like I had failed. I did feel a lot of trust in my Mum though, she never criticised me and was kind about it. My younger brother (who did not have these issues) never seemed to mind/understood if I had a day off when he didn’t.

I gradually got better at this as I got a bit older, and happily attended many day trips when I got older. I think people sometimes do have a really strong aversion against something/need more time, and I don’t think it affected my long term resilience (as an adult I actually love nothing more than travelling to brand new places and organised many school trips myself as a teacher funnily enough 😂).

Good luck whatever you decide 😊

But people who are bad at Maths don't have to take part in a compulsory Maths competition with all the parents invited to witness them getting all the questions wrong and coming last.

Quietly kept dd1 at home. We read our books in the garden and studiously ignored the yelling and cheering (live v near school). She was one of the youngest in the year and felt humiliated coming publicly last in every race in front of a baying crowd. She hated the “aww bless” fake sympathy from the mums too.

Just did it in year 2 she went to the others. She is a young adult now at a RG university has thrived academically and socially and is decent at a team sport of her choice - so no adverse impact!

I think it is setting them up for a complete lack of resilience, and even worse in boys, the sense that the rules they don’t like don’t apply to them.

There’s No shame in coming last, especially if you have tried your best. That applies even in the Olympic final!

Even at seven he should know that sometimes you just have to get on with it, preferably with good grace. Yes he doesn’t like, but so what- it really is not a big deal.

sports day is supposed to be fun!
tbh if school makes it in a way that children feel left out, then it's not well done.

not in uk but my dc sports day was a day at the beach.
strictly no parents.
sandcastle building was part of the activities.
and frisbee.
and capture the flag.
it's fun for everyone, no winning, no losing.

school also has an athletic competition but that's by sign up.

Lots of good suggestions re sports day. Are you doing anything to help counteract the hyoermobility? I’m v hyper mobile and ended up in a really bad way in my twenties, requiring lots of physio. The solution was building up muscles, through pilates and weight training. Had this been known I’m sure starting younger would have helped.

Exactly it’s supposed to be fun! Really don’t understand the miss trunchball parents making their child do something they hate for some nebulous “greater good”.

No they don’t become magically “resilient” they will look back and wonder why their mum was such a rule following unresponsive parent. Look at the numerous posters put off sport for years!

I was awesome at my sports days absolutely cleaned up but I was an oct birthday dd1 is July.

This is such a difficult one. You can’t have an emergency dentist appointment every year (!) and from the schools pov if they allow one child to opt out it’s be chaos. With your hyper mobile son can you get the GP or his physio to write a note saying that that amount of exercise on one day isn’t good for his joints and he will have to limit himself to the egg and spoon type races?

The school won’t care or do anything about missing one day. They have bigger fish to fry.

You can’t use hyper mobility as a reason to get out of sports day though. It is very common and it can actually give you an advantage in sports.

Most schools also put on less serious events that aren’t so competitive. Egg and spoon, obstacle course or 3 legged race type stuff. It is a shame when they don’t.

Children are humiliated daily by being non-academic. Sitting on the 'special' table. All the class knows. The embarrassment factor. Coming home with questions about why the other kids can do the work when they can't. Why they have to have help. Getting laughed at.

Don't underplay that. It's horrible for them.

On the one hand, I do think part of life is learning to do things you don’t enjoy. But at the same time, I really wonder what sports day ever taught me. For me, it was nothing but humiliation, and like your child, I used to dread it for weeks in advance.

This brings me to one of the bigger problems in schools, how sport and PE are approached. When I think back to my own PE lessons, they were so focused on a narrow range of competitive sports. There was very little emphasis on health or fitness as something important in itself. We weren’t encouraged to enjoy exercise or to understand why it matters for our wellbeing. Instead, we were made to do what felt like the most pointless activities. Cross country springs to mind, just running laps around the school for no clear reason.

I’ve always been fit and active, but that’s because my mum taught us that staying healthy is part of living well. A lot of my friends from school didn’t have that kind of encouragement at home, and even though they were good at sport back then, they haven’t kept active in adult life. It feels like a missed opportunity, and one that’s still happening today.

Of course, there are other subjects that make kids anxious too, like maths, but we don’t make them do competitive sums in front of the whole school and all their parents.

So I do struggle with the idea of taking kids out of things just because they don’t like them, as I think there’s something to be said for building a bit of resilience. But when I look back, I’m not sure what that kind of embarrassment really taught me. If it were me, I’d probably take both children out of school and do something lovely together instead, as long as neither of them feels like they’re missing out.

Someone has to be last, just like in a maths test or baking cookies. You should be teaching them that they should take part and that the result really doesn't matter.

Take them swimming to a water park for the day ,then they still get some exercise

This was my line with DS2 - but if I could turn back the clock I would keep him off. At his school no one fails publicly in spelling or maths. No one is humiliated or laughed at for coming last. DS2 got nothing out of sports day and I wish I had handled it differently.

I would take them out for the day.
It's not like having to do Maths etc as people are saying IMO.
You wouldn't expect a child with no musical talent who can't sing in tune to stand up in front of hundreds of people and do a solo. And you wouldn't make a child with a speech impediment do a reading in assembly. It would be humiliating for them. Sports day is the equivalent of that for some kids. Give them a break!

I don’t understand all this talk about “humiliation” on sports day. Who’s humiliating them? People are complaining about how schools are organising sports day but it sounds like the problem is actually the other parents who are watching the races? If there were no spectators would coming last still be humiliating???

Go into school and apart from the possible taking him out explain this to his teacher. See what they say.