6 year old is sad to only have 2 words to say in nativity

[Crowandrow]

Hi everyone,
I just wanted to ask a question.
My six year old son is very sad to only have 2 words to say in the nativity. He says that everyone else has lots of words and are in more than one scene. He is in one scene.

He doesn't usually get upset by things but keeps mentioning how upset by this he is. He is also quite honest and tells me what is going on (telling me if he got in trouble etc) so I believe him.
he is also really sad that he has never got a certificate at all. He said quite sadly to me: I've shown perseverance! Why haven't I got one like everyone else?

WIBU to raise it with the teacher?something along the lines of: my son is a bit sad that he's got such a small part/ hasn't got a certificate unlike everyone else. I don't want to overstep, annoy the teacher or make things difficult for my son though. How should I approach it?
thank you.

You’re a teacher? Secondary by any chance?

When I was a teacher there was av pager in my mark book (I’m that old) which showed which kids had received a certificate and which hadn’t, I’d always tried to make sure over the years they all got one/a fairly fair split. It will come.

As for the play big up his part, with a class full of kids they can’t so be Mary and Joseph. In some places it helps if your parent is a governor. I was one but my kids were not interested and asked for demotions.

My son is doing theatre at the conservatoire. This year he will play someone who doesn't say anything because he's mutic. A play is about group effort not individuals so you can tell him that.

About the diploma I would gently ask the teacher if everyone got one except him. Maybe that's not true? And if it is the teacher will surely give him one.

I don't think there's any harm in telling the teacher hes feeling invisible. The teachers do want the children to thrive.

I hate Star if the Wrek. Great for the one who gets it, rubbish for all the others. And the one that's last on the list feels the worst of the lot (and it feels like a made up reason... DD got got hers for "doing well in the drumming class". )

Sometime ago This morning featured a boy who had the task of opening a door to let Joseph and Mary in and that was all he had been offered by the teacher. Sadly not all the kids can be the star of the show. I thought it was good of the teacher to think of having door openers in the event as it must be hard trying to include everyone.

We are 12 weeks into the school year so less than half my class have had a certificate yet. We give out one a week in celebration collective worship. I’m not sure what you want the teacher to do about that - invent more weeks?

The issue with the play is that you have 30 kids per class and need to give each something to say. Perhaps others are more vocal and will be given roles of narrator which do generally get more to say, however it's likely most children only get to say something small. I know we have had to have a child saying welcome to our play and someone end it with thanks for coming just to ensure they had something to say.

Certificate wise how often are they given out? We do ours weekly and it's one per class. Maybe he hasn't got one yet as it's a new school year and the class teacher won't know what last year's teacher did. We have a copy of the register and tick off when we have given a child a certificate so in theory everyone in the class will get chosen at some point, but it might not be til the summer term. It sounds unfortunate but as he joined late in the school year he might just have been missed off by that teacher.
Definitely encourage him to continue showing the right behaviours. We have some children who cry when it's not them that win, and have to work with them on understanding we need to be pleased for our friends but it is ok to feel a bit sad.
I don't think there is anything worthy of mentioning to the teacher yet, unless it turns out for example 5 certificates per class are handed out each week and the same children are chosen each time.

The fact that you’ve said you are a teacher amazes me! You should know better.

I haven't read the full thread but would say this.

We're only about 13 weeks into the year. So not everyone will have had certificates yet. We generally try and be fair across the year and ensure that all children will be recognised for something. We give out one certificate a week. Not a certificate for every child who shows something every time they show it.

Secondly, allocating parts in the nativity/Christmas performance is an absolute minefield. Include a SEND child with unclear speech and another parent will be cross that their child with perfect diction hasn't been included. Include a child with perfect diction and the parent of a child with unclear speech will be cross that you're not being inclusive enough.

We often see a different version of a child than the parents see at home. We allocate roles, speaking parts and consider how much movement there is based on what we see of that child every day. Some children want a speaking part others don't. Some like the idea of it and want to do it but are anxious about speaking in class so we wouldn't put them on a stage to speak in front of an audience. Or we'd give them a couple of words.

I've never worked with a teacher who just thought, "Ah fuck it!" And randomly allocated parts or gave the least confident child a major.part. personally, I consider their personalities, capabilities, behaviour, levels of comfort etc and find a way to.include everyone as best as I can.

Thirdly, I also don't mind any parent talking to me about anything for any reason. Be respectful and listen to my response that's all.

It's my class and my job and I do it well. That doesn't mean I never make a.mistake, never forget or never overlook, even though I do my best not to, because I'm still just a person doing a job and no one is perfect.

If it makes you feel better - when I was at school and we did the nativity, the first year I had no part at all. Just left to sit it out with two others for whom there was also apparently no part. This was a small private school with less than 25 of us in the year. In contrast, there were 90 in DD's year and they managed to find a part (most non speaking) and a costume for everyone. Villagers, sheep, loads of inn keepers, stars....it's not that hard.

I’m a teacher and had your situation and left it, didn’t cause a fuss. It never got any better. My child was overlooked throughout primary. Unfortunately some teachers aren’t particularly fair and don’t consider how left out some children end up being. So ask, don’t leave it.

At least he has words. There will be loads of children sitting in the floor with a hat in the shape of a star and they will have no lines.

Honestly @Crowandrow none of this matters
Ours are teens noW so have been through the ups and downs of primary school

The only thing in your power is how to help him respond to how he feels

So he has two words, great make them good words baby, he will sing as well they all sing.

So he hasn’t got a certificate, so what, many don’t, doesn’t mean he isn’t doing well, some get certificates for overcoming really struggles, some for sheer outstanding brilliance. Almost every child is about average. And might get a bit overlooked.

Again it really doesn’t matter how you respond to him matters, “I know you have perseverance, and your teacher knows and you don’t need a piece of paper to prove that” etc

The only piece of paper that matters, the only one, from school is the one your GCSE results are printed on. That’s it.

You can’t make him be chosen for different parts in a play, you can’t chose who gets certificates. All you can do is help him respond to this things. That is a much more useful lesson it really is.

OP, I have 2 academically successful, talented, kind, well adjusted, confident, and loving teen and adult son.

One thing I didn’t do, was participate in the tug of war, minefield, competitive, toxic playground and school bullshit. There were many occasions when other parents sharp elbows and brow beaten teachers took a chip out of my children’s ego, but I always counter balanced it.

My DC’s hobbies, talents, and even their academics (maths tutor) happened outside of the school. They never did clubs at school. I took them to swim lessons, instrument lessons, drama clubs etc. outside where the professionals who run it chose people on talent and effort. You also make other friends whilst doing it.

Encourage your DC to make friends at school, but try to do a lot away from it and develop his self esteem that way.

Thank you everyone for your messages, I appreciate them all! Am just about to have a meeting so will reply properly later.

That’s life! Sometimes you get bigger parts, sometimes you’ll get smaller parts. I can’t imagine a Play with 6 year olds having many lines for each child anyway. I wouldn’t be making a big thing of it and would discourage the moping. If you told the school he was disappointed with his part, what would you like them to do? Give him more lines? What would happen if lots of parents did this, would you expect the teachers to give those children more lines and the play end up 3 hours long? I would celebrate the lines and part he has.
As for the certificate, it’s likely they get one once a week and every child will get picked. It’s only term one so I’m certain over half the class haven’t had one yet.

Oh course you are being unreasonable. Most kids don't get any words. Also it's not your call( or his) it's the teachers.

I think this happens every year and some kids are left out a bit. I do actually think some of it comes down to bad script selection and/or an unwillingness to reshape some of the lines. One of the nicest ones we had was ‘nativity’s got talent’ and it genuinely felt like every kid has a proper moment either dancing, singing or lines and was one of the most balanced ones with parts like the ‘camels’ shining. That has been my favourite one out of years of nativities.

I think where you have problems is if you pick a script where a few kids have 20 lines and a lot of the others have 1. It doesn’t make for a very balanced allocation

Maybe think about how it makes the children who have to sit their week after week applauding others whilst their own achievements go unnoticed and petition for a better system of recognition? We all know it's the quiet, well behaved kids who wait the longest.

My kids went to a large primary. There was always a flock of sheep and a herd of camels. Most of them had no speaking parts.

You say you are a teacher, so you know it’s unreasonable to raise it, surely?

Your son is, I’m sure, envious of others who have more lines than him. That’s natural.
Just bolster his confidence at home and let school run their nativity whilst trying to keep everyone happy (an impossible task)!

I was never in a school nativity. I did play an angel in a church nativity though. My abiding memory of school nativity is the girl from my class who had been cast as Mary getting the screaming abdabs and sobbing that “she couldn’t go through with it”.

I did get cast as one of a crowd of weeping women in a non-nativity school performance, my parents made a point of telling me how good I’d been, apparently the other girls in the “crowd” were giggling, but I was really acting crying!

I used to be an infant teacher. Something a colleague said about being "that parent" stayed with me. She said that, as a teacher, she never got to talk to her children's teachers casually. The result was that, by the time she actually contacted the school about a problem it had escalated, and she was very upset and not in the best frame of mind. She became "that parent" herself. Her understanding helped me to understand.

Btw, well behaved children normally get Star of the Week later, because we know we can give it to them any given week. With trickier children, if they do anything to justify it, we give it with a sigh of relief.

When I was younger I was a reindeer. My mum didn't want to buy me a costume so I dressed up in my Scooby Doo outfit 😂😂

Just tell him to adlib a monologue.

Nobody is going to stop him.