Children picking their own teams

[Alifemoreordinary123]

AIBU to think this is old fashioned and not the best way to do stuff?

My DD struggles with school, she has some ND traits and finds the girls relationships and dynamics really hard. They’re doing a challenge at school and have asked the children to self select teams of between 3-6. Immediately, the popular extroverts were selecting their people, with all the others wanting to group with the popular ones. My daughter isn’t in these little groups and actually had her own idea for a project but no one wants to be in her team, consider her project or will listen to her. It’s basically a popularity contest.

I’m supporting her to acknowledge but dial down how hard this feels for her. She’s upset, not sleeping and generally this is making her feel sad. It’s not the most important thing in the world but it feels like one thing after another atm.

Is it unreasonable to expect schools to allocate groups in this day and age given that adults of old have fed back on mass that being left out is horrible and has a detrimental impact on confidence and input from less popular kids?

I don't think kids get picked primarily on ability but more based on friendships and popularity.

I was always picked last because I was a fat and unsporty child. However, there was one team sport I excelled at and over the years became better and better at and I still got picked last even for that because everyone just assumed that I sucked at all games.

Completely agree. I've touched on that in a response I just wrote to another pp. It's totally possible to encourage/nurture the sporty kids without subjecting the un-sporty ones to unnecessary embarrassment, though.

Why is it only the kids who are never picked who have to “build resilience?”

My disabled child already has buckets more resilience than the other kids. But she also had to face the embarrassment of never being picked for a team. This is why we took her out of PE. No child needs that shit in their life.

I know exactly what you mean OP

It’s not just about the popular kids vs less popular. What happens if there is a friendship group of 6 say but teams of 5 - one will get left out and upset if they are left to their own devices - whereas if adults organise it they will likely split them into 2s or 3s across different groups so everyone has a friend with them.

Our school recently proposed an event in teams of 4 and told the kids to find their own team. It’s caused so many fallings out and upsets.

The stupid thing is the school is usually very much in control of groups, as they know how many issues self selection causes, but has seemingly abandoned that principle for this one event. Bizarre.

Why is it only the kids who are never picked who have to “build resilience?”

it's not. It's only what some parent pretend, that only their child suffer, that some "popular' and successful children have an easy life and they get everything without asking for it. Some people like to pretend life is just so unfair, and they are the victim of the world. (now some kids have it easier than others, undoubtedly, but I was just replying to your question, it's not a black and white scenario).

It's nothing like that in real life.

I don't know what kind of society you live in that makes you think everything is just about winning but it's not a society I want to live in or one that I want my kids to live in.

It's not all about winning. In fact when it comes to learning very little should be about winning or at least winning against others. Being able to work collaboratively, encouraging others, working out your differences, and most importantly, learning how to benefit and enjoy any experience are much more valuable skills when it comes to achieving both your own personal goals and groups goals (like at work)

If you make everything about winning you are going to raise some very unhappy children because most of us don't go through life winning all the time.

Nope. These kids get the “star of the week” “most improved” or “best behaved” or “good team player” “outstanding attendance” participation certificates they hand out for academics. So the smart but not sporty kids rarely get those certificates either.

My daughter got top marks in all academic things in primary. She won non-school competitions for her writing skills. She had never (and I mean NEVER) got in trouble from the teachers. She took part in anything she was given the chance to, she was a school team captain. All though primary school she never won a single award. Until the P7 they gave her a bullshit “inspiration” award, just because she happens to be disabled.

We always made it clear that she shouldn’t expect awards for anything, the most important thing was she did her best at whatever she did. Now she’s in high school she doesn’t even bother attending any of the awards ceremonies even if she has had a certificate for something. She knows it’s all a heap of nonsense.

No all kids need to build resilience- it isn’t just for the not picked kids. That lesson appears to every child at different times in different ways. We are speaking specifically about one instance here in this post.

But it is. Nobody says only their child suffers. We’ve had many conversations about how despite her disability, some other children will be worse off than my daughter in different ways. Life is unfair, and there are kids who have a much easier ride of it, to pretend otherwise is ridiculous. But that isn’t what this is about.

Can you point to any other aspect of school where we insist the less able kids are singled out when they are forced to take part and told they just need to be resilient when they are being humiliated? We don’t make them choose teams for maths and have to compete in front of everyone else. We don’t make dyslexic children read aloud in front of the entire class. We don’t put a dunce’s cap on the child who got the lowest mark. All those things would surely “build resilience” in the humiliation? But we still insist the ones who are never picked for sports or do badly at sports days have to take part whether they like it or not, and we don’t reward effort in them at all.

But it is the one instance where we insist they are doing it by being humiliated in front of others. That does nothing for building resilience (hence the quotation marks in my post) We stopped academically embarrassing kids in front of their peers decades ago but we still persist in doing it in school sports. We don’t let them choose where they sit in class, or who they work with in groups because we realised it didn’t help a whole bunch of kids to do that. We discovered it was better for less able kids to be grouped with more able kids. We introduced playground rules which stopped kids being left out, we work on friendships and respect etc. Yet when it comes to sports, we still insist on letting them choose who is on their team and leaving the less able kids feeling humiliated. Why is that ok?

you know you can win as team, ever heard of team sport? Yes, in sport it's about winning.

I live in the real world. Kids who train and spend a lot of time and effort do it to .. win?

Of course you need to learn to work with others, but because you are all working towards the same goal, again winning.

Kids are very happy and have a healthy attitude, thanks!

Not school, but a youth group. We often ask the children to get into a pair/3, and then put that pair with another pair so they always have a friend but also get to work with some different people on activities. Group is aged 5-8 years.
I wonder what opinions are on this?

I am ND, was always last picked. Now I run large teams, I hire people and I pick people to be in the teams. I like to think those moments where you see what goes on, see the popular girls and decide you don't want to be in their little clique anyway, shape a person. When I hire, I hire for excellence in the skills, kindness, a good heart, good team working skills and definitely look for people who are not a twat.
It does hurt at that age though, but ND people forge their own path separate from the crowd anyway.
I absolutely love seeing old school people check me out on linked in 😂
Good luck Sandra with your shit life, I am out here killing it, while you are selling wax melts for pennies. Who's picking now!
I always tell my kids, don't dare make fun of the nerdy kids, they will be the ones in power, the bosses and the decision makers.

I can't eye roll my eyes more, are adults still dividing kids between "popular" and "non popular" ones?

What are you talking about? It's the kids who are doing the dividing, not the adults. I think your comment is disingenuous, you can't be oblivious to the fact that popularity-based segregation at school is a thing.

Elsewhere you claim it's 'nasty' and 'shitty' for adults to talk about 'popular' kids. I fail to see how it is nasty or shitty to acknowledge that yes, unfortunately, in every school class some kids are regarded as popular and others not. It shouldn't be that way, but it just seems to be how the dynamics work among kids and teens.

Speaking as someone who was considered part of the unpopular crew at school for years, I didn't have any kind of bone to pick with the popular ones unless they picked on me and bullied me, which some did. Let's not pretend some popular kids aren't also bullies, because they are, just like some unpopular kids.

I'm sensing this thread has touched some kind of nerve with you, I could be wrong of course, but your posts are coming off quite belligerent tbh.

And the end of year play in year 6. And the mathematician competition which is based on kids doing well in maths. And the other school teams. And head of house. And head of year.

Not just sports - lots of things to be disappointed for not being chosen.

It is beyond belief that in 2025 teachers are still doing something so damaging and pointless to children . Unnecessary misery .

Wendy Cope wrote a poem about the sense of bleakness this gave her at school in the 1960s .
I went to school in the 1970s where they used as a method of punishment for students with dyslexia getting them to stand up in assembly and try to spell words whilst everyone laughed at them . Allowing kids to pick teams should be as obsolete and shocking as this …
If you mix people up randomly (using something like the lolly stick method) they get a chance to work/ talk to with those they don’t normally gravitate toward .

Utterly unnecessary ‘life lesson ‘ in performative cruelty . Not v useful unless you’re planning to spend your life amongst sociopaths .

People pick who they like - that’s just life. Not sure that makes them sociopaths, unless the word sociopath means something entirely different to what it actually means.

Sociopaths lack empathy & have a disregard for others so I think realising that adult teachers can design such a horrible system is pretty useful for teaching kids about them myself . Part of educating children is getting them to appreciate the good qualities of their peers who often get ‘rejected ‘ .

I was always the one left out and it affected me badly so yes I think school should be doing stuff to avoid this, it's really brings out the bullies

I am pointing out that the posters preaching for "inclusion" see no irony in being so rude and horrible towards the "successful kids". (SOME posters obviously) because it's not about being popular the problem, is it.

in every school class some kids are regarded as popular and others not
True, bullies and disruptive kids tend not to be liked that much. The popular kids I have seen are the nice and funny ones, that's why they are popular.

you can't be oblivious to the fact that popularity-based segregation at school is a thing. again, it's very reductive. Yes, football-boys like to be with football-boys, minecraft-kids like to be with their minecraft-friends. What's wrong with that?

Humiliation is not a useful emotion for building resilience. It is really destructive.
I saw a year 9 boy made to stand on a chair on a DofE weekend whilst a teacher berated him for several minutes until he’d brought him to tears in front of around 90 other students . He had only been chatting a bit too long . ‘destroy one early and it makes the others behave ‘ said the teacher with a wink to horrified me .
At the school year 13 leaving party , 4 years later , that student thanked me for coming up to him at the time and saying the teacher had been completely out of order and that had been a misuse of power & totally inappropriate. The student had been dealing with a v difficult home environment at the time too .
If a child is able to unpack a humiliating experience (that has occurred by accident ) with empathetic & sensible caregivers it can sometimes be turned into an overall positive experience increasing their sense of self esteem . For adults to engineer humiliating experiences , such as allowing kids to pick teams is another matter entirely.

The only people who think this is a good idea are the parents of sporty, popular children who think its good for them to hone their decision making and strategic planning skills at the expense of significant discomfort caused to children who are not sporty and/or popular.

Your experience is quite different from mine. When I was at school and when my children were at school popularity was less to do with how 'nice' you were, and a lot more to do with how physically attractive you were, whether you had the right trainers, were from the right social class and were confident.
Being a bully was no barrier to belonging to the popular group. In fact excluding and laughing at others was often a badge of membership. Similarly, 'disruptive' behaviour was often considered amusing and cool and enhanced social value.
I'm not saying all popular kids are unpleasant, but equally it's important to acknowledge that all unpopular ones aren't either. Unless you go to school in an Enid Blyton novel, sterling character traits are not necessarily what decides your place on the popularity scale.

Sounds like we had a similar experience. I always assume people won't/ don't like me too.
I'm disappointed to hear things are sometimes still.done that way 💐