AIBU to stop my partner from forcing our daughter into more sports?

[Opalskies]

In my family we have a rule that our kids need to do an athletic activity outside of school. Just one, to keep them active and healthy.

My DH is very athletic, and enjoys a wide range of sports, which is a hobby that he shares with our son. My daughter on the other hand, only enjoys playing tennis, but would much rather be reading or drawing.

The problem is that DH wants our daughter to stop doing the activities she loves and replace them with more sports, something she doesn't want to do.

I don't want to force my daughter into playing additional sports she doesn't want to do, and so I put my foot down, saying no, but my DH keeps insisting.

Am I being unreasonable though?

And there’s the drip

she plays extensively
you had a rule of one sports club
your dh is insisting on changing that
You need to advocate for her and draw a line under this

this I am afraid. I was never a sporty child. I am neither a team person nor competive and have mild dispraxia. As a child I liked to walk in the local park or just out, garden and do all manner of active activities that were not "sport" Do you make your son read when he doesn't want to or do art or craft activities? and if not then why not?

What does your son do?

what do you do?

I don't see how. She likes and enjoys playing tennis with her friends and other kids.

It is totally normal for a child to be able to find their own ways of having fun rather than being sent to an organised activity every week. Not all kids are the same. My sister did loads of activities. My brother and did hardly any and rarely had much/any enthusiasm for the ones we did do. I did Brownies and there wasn’t a single week where I wouldn’t rather have stayed home creating my latest set of characters for the elaborate novel I was planning, or gone out to play knights and castles with my friend up the street.

To this day I loathe having my leisure time organised into set activities. All adults are different and all kids are different too.

I absolutely hated sport as a kid. I was rubbish at it and PE "lessons" at school just involved being forced to run around a field or stand around while the popular sporty kids who knew what they were doing arse kissed the PE teachers. Home was my respite and I was thankfully never forced to do any sports outside school. From the day I went to college at 16 to today I have never done organised sport again. Pushing traditional sportiness onto kids who hate it and have no aptitude for it has that effect. You'd be much better off encouraging activeness rather than sport. Nature walk? Geo caching? Family bike ride? Fun splash type session at the leisure centre?

This!

I think the premise of doing an active activity is fine but why does it have to be a sport?

Abusive? Neglectful?
🤣🤣🤣🤣

Your husband wants her to do more than that? He’s an arsehole.

No it isn’t.

There’s a middle ground between leaving them to play on devices all day and forcing them out into clubs and activities they don’t enjoy.

Plenty of kids would hate going to activities or clubs but could still enjoy an active lifestyle walking the dog, cycling, or just going for a walk.

“Pushing” children into activities they don’t like is a recipe for disaster. Encouraging a natural curiosity and willingness to try new things is the healthy approach, but it doesn’t mean insisting they do activities they explicitly don’t want to do.

My youngest DS hates all organised activities. We have tried all sorts but he just doesn't enjoy them. He is quite happy to pootle about at home or the park and do his own thing. His brother does loads of clubs etc. It's just how they are.

It's not the same at all to force someone to do something they absolutely hate

and expecting your kids to pick different activities and actually do them, at least to try.

And people are being dishonest pretending kids shouldn't have organised activities. 10 years old are obviously too young to be left completely alone and unsupervised to do things completely alone, on which planet would that be safe.

Dear me OP, of course six hours of sports in a week is enough. In fact your drip feed pushes me in the other direction, if she would prefer to be reading and drawing then she should be allowed to cut down. 3 days a week is plenty.

Even if she was, what do you think forcing her to do sport is going to do? 🙄

Who says it needs to be 'organised'? Got the impression from the opening post that it's an athletic activity that's being talked about. Not joining the laosse team but some exercise

so now kids should be dumped into something they don't like to give their parents a break?

yup sport. Why does it have to be bloody sport?

And that’s something you can impose when Theyre 5yo.
At 10yo and heading into adolescence, you already need to soften your approach to include their likes and dislikes. And to teach them to be independent.
Otherwise you either end up in a battle ground or a teen that refuses to do anything.

Plenty of kids would hate going to activities or clubs but could still enjoy an active lifestyle walking the dog, cycling, or just going for a walk.

I swear I am yet to meet a child who enjoys to "go for a walk".
if they do, good for them, I am not sure I would feel completely safe if my 10 year old was disappearing for hours to go for walks on their own, but maybe that's because my area!

I go alone for miles, but I am an adult, and many adult women don't even feel safe to do that!

10 years old is year 5... Not quite teenagers

To add, the time to create the interest and likes for sports and activities is when they are in Primary school, so it's already part of their routines when they become teenagers, and indeed they don't refuse to suddenly join any kind of club.

you should have met me but its around 60 years too late. We had a local park which I loved to walk in.

Because she is heading into teenagehood. Wait 1, maybe 2 years and you’ll see the resentment of having been forced to do something she doesn’t enjoy become a rejection of ALL sports.

@godmum56 Our son does enjoy reading too, and is currently drawing characters for his comic. He just plays and enjoys more sports than his sister.

@Rumbley Our son plays Tennis with his sister, goes cycling with his dad, plays football in his school club and does judo. I run, rock climb and swim. Family (including daughter) occasionally swims, but it's not really their thing, and so I don't include it.

I'm not being dishonest at all. I don't think kids should have to go to organised activities if they don't want to.