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?!

Sports day at our secondary is huge and held at the local university but it’s for teens to volunteer. So the sporty ones race and the others watch and cheer them on. No one is forced to race.

I would also keep mine off if they asked.
I hated sports day, one race still sticks in my mind (we had to wear our parents work uniform to run) I was 6, wearing size 10 boots. I cried. I felt mortified because I could barely walk let alone run.
I wish my mum let me have it off.
In my day they'd give out stickers up to 4th place (my kids school just get a standard sticker)
I didn't even get one, not even a certificate of taking part. It truly was excruciating.

I've never heard of sports days instead of just a standard sports day. Thankfully, some secondary schools just have the children who want to do it, actually do it which works out better than attempting forced fun (which isn't fun at all).

Even if it was over 3 days, I'd allow mine to stay home if they wanted.

One of my children just refuse to do it. They still want to go to school and will sit with the class but when it comes to the time of them standing up to run, she will just sit there. Wild horses wouldn't be able to move her. I'll make sure she's okay, give her a hug etc but I will not force her to take part

The kids who aren’t good at Maths don’t generally have to do it in front of the entire school, staff and hundreds of parents 🙄

I thinks it's very different for a kid to struggle in front of a huge group of parents/kids to a kid who's not good at maths. They don't have a crowd watching!
Try speaking to the teacher, they likely can help.

Same, on both points. Never heard of a multiple day sports day before. Sometimes different ones for different year groups, but then it would only be one day that needed to be avoided.

If this is something that's actually common though, it's an even better idea to keep DC off because the schools concerned really need to be made to change it.

I hated sports day as a child.
And more so when i had a child.
School plays etc i just found it boring so did my child..
Thank god them days are over.
Tbh my son was unwell on a few days of the year😉.

My daughter is ND, hypermobile and dyspraxic. I forced her to sports day every year , big mistake!!! She has struggled massively and seriously with her mental health,her psych traced some of the origins back to her uncatered for struggles in PE and sports day as triggers. The lack of help with her ND was a big trigger too.

I think we need to stop with the building resilience thing. Kids that struggle are way more resilient than most. They do it every day. There is zero value in making life even harder.

That’s true but they can be very aware/self conscious about it every other day of the school year when they’re not as fast at arithmetic or their work looks different to their neighbours/friends or their reading book is clearly less ‘advance’. I’m not saying it’s not tough on sports day for some children, esp in front of a crowd of people, but it’s just one day. Some kids feel this type of anxiety about school every day. So it’s not always as simple as take them out for the day and the problem goes away. I’d rather find a solution that helped them take part in as many events as possible and support them through any disappointment.

Being last in an Olympic final still makes you one of the best athletes in the world. Coming last in a school race at an age where competitive kids (& smug parents) make life hard is incomparable.

Agree @R0ckl0bsterresilience and confidence is not built by forcing children to do something they are unlikely to succeed in. To build these skills they should be challenged but the challenge should always be something attainable for them.

Just a few examples of where it could be tough and humiliating for a child who is no good at maths…
-times tables champions/ class maths games
group/paired work
-peer to peer marking.
-being asked a maths question in front of the class…
-Always having to ask for help/get help from the teacher…

Children are very observant, they see who struggles

It's the way to put kids off sports for life, get them doing fitness classes or get some gym equipment and make it enjoyable.

Yes, there's this weird quasi emotional attachment to the idea that making kids do something potentially damaging is building resilience. None of the people who claim this ever have any evidence that forcing anxious DC with SEN, ND, health conditions etc into sports day achieves anything.

As a parent, part of your job is teaching your child that sometimes you'll be asked to do things that are of no benefit, may even be harmful and that you can swerve without consequence. If sports day is that for your child, and they can stay off, it's good parenting to facilitate that so they can save their resources for things that actually matter.

They don't do any of that. Academic lessons and tests are just sat at desks. Peer to peer marking isn't a big deal.

There's no competition element, no pitting the cleverest again the less academically able with an audience.

It still isn't the same because it isn't as public and full of sympathy cheers at the end when you come last.

It would be the same if the whole school and parents were invited to watch children take part in a maths game and the one who came last had loud sympathy cheers at the end.

Times tables champions is literally a game where they stand up and the teacher asks at timetables questions and the quickest person wins… I was a teacher I remember doing it and I remember doing similar in school I hated maths. I wasn’t good at it and I found it very embarrassing. We did it practically every day.

there may not be parents there, but the feeling is still the same! the sentiment is still the same, just because the parents aren’t there to watch doesn’t mean that they cannot feel the same way that that a child feels on sports day

They could also be the same child that feels like shit on sports day too. I just don't see the need to put a child through that.

Maths is necessary, a vital GCSE which opens doors if you can pass it.

Sports day isn't the same. It doesn't mean anything.

OP my son is in year 3 and also small for his age and is so competitive that he wants to win but normally doesn't as there are some rather big kids in his year that beat him, but he gives it a go nonetheless, however, if it was affecting him and he didn't want to go I 100% would keep him off, it'll have zero impact on his education and he won't forget that u did it either. I was also terrible at sports and got left with the absolute rubbish ones like 1500m race which I would never have been able to do, so my mum kept me off too. My dad wasn't very impressed, but I'm 35 now and still thank her for it! The anxiety about that day was awful!

Okay well isn’t the solution to try and find more inclusive ways of involving all children that don’t involve competing rather than this race to the bottom of ‘well if they have to do it in maths/reading etc then they have to in PE also?

I’m not saying they HAVE to do it. Nobody has to do anything essentially but we need to be careful in the mindset that we choose to instill in our children. If @cadburyegg knows her children well and knows that by allowing them to step out of this day, they will still have good values about exercise and staying healthy then that’s fine. But it’s not just that, just being able to take part in things for the benefit of other people is a lesson to learn, it’s not always about you. Sometimes I have to do things at work that I really don’t wanna do, but it’s not about me, It’s about other people too. I don’t think sports day was created with any malice. It was created as an exercise to celebrate sport and sporting ability, regardless of what that is. We have to be careful of the mindset that we’re creating and I understand that some people don’t want to create the mindset of “I’m a failure” either.

So obviously it’s a balance and we need to meet somewhere in the middle, but avoiding these emotions is not teaching our children any emotional resilience or how to understand their emotions it’s just shoving them in under a carpet, it’s not helping them to understand and deal with them.

And I agree I suppose this is something the PTA could bring forward to the school. The PTA could insist on reinventing sports day. Make the kids more involved in other aspects have them be the linesman, have them be the whistleblower, have them be the person who hands the medals, have them be the person who hands our the water, but get them involved in celebrating the day for others also.

I don’t agree with missing the day either though, and I think if we made it more inclusive than it might spread them on to take part in a race on a ‘just for fun’ basis.

This argument gets trotted out again and again on these threads, and it makes no sense. You do know that PE lessons are year round and multiple times a week, just like maths lessons? The sporty kids get to shine week in, week out, in PE lessons (and in extra curricular sporting activities) - the unsporty kids struggle but get on with it, just like the kids who hate maths do in maths lessons.

Sports day adds an audience, which is humiliating for self-conscious, unsporty kids. There is absolutely no equivalent where unacademic kids are forced to fail in front of a crowd of parents giving them patronising sympathy cheers.