I cannot stand watching my child do dance /shows !

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Now I know what I put my parents through when I was a kid (which they also agree with ) and how mind numbingly boring it was for them to endure. My 12 year old regularly shows me dances /songs/ shows anything drama she's created with her self/ her siblings god it's so mind numbing to sit and entertain.
I know I'm being unreasonable but nope can't stand that part of parenting anyone else with me ?

I must be weird but I enjoyed the dance shows and would see year on year children gaining more confidance and skills.
I did however as a child put on puppet shows (with string puppets and a stage sound of music style) I would even charge the neighbours to watch!

DNx 2 used to do this and in their case it was 100% attention seeking and they’d stand there making up rubbish as they went along. So I pretended it was an audition for a real play or show and would cue them in for their turn ( 5 minutes) before interrupting them with a ‘thank you so much, we’ll be in touch’ ! It was quite effective.

YANBU.

Some crappy responses on here.

@cardibach not when it's hours and hours no 🤣🤣🤣🤣

I’ve been there. I appreciate the effort of all the performers.

It can be. DD saves her cute TikTok pet videos so she can sit with me to show me each one and explain the back story. Sometimes I am not in the mood but I’ll fake it.

I'm sitting here chuckling.

When I was an enthusiastic young teacher, I asked whether Mum would like to come to my school's Christmas concert. (No, I wasn't a music teacher.)

Mum fixed me with a gimlet eye: "Good God. Wasn't it enough that I sat through yours?!"

Oh god I thought the Christmas concert I sat through would never end! My daughter did a good enough job and then a number who could properly play and sing. One kid is clearly a future professional pianist. Then there was every other bloody performance. Anyone who had auditioned had been allowed to perform. I deserved an Oscar for my poker face!

At least it is indoors. Football is much worse outdoors freezing, travelling across county on a Saturday morning to freeze on the sideline in a mucky field.
The mini World Cup is 3 hours.

It's really obvious you haven't been to many of these shows....

Yes it's lovely to support your child in their endeavours, but generally when they are young the kids are pretty dire, and when you have sat through 2+ hours of fairly inept kids performance and they are not even your own kids, it does get a bit tough to keep the smile plastered on your face!!

Sadly it's also the case that loads of parents encourage their kids to participate in drama /music/ performance arts but don't bother to practise at home. Kids are on stage and don't know the words to the song /can barely play the song on the instrument they are playing and you just think why are you encouraging them to perform if they don't even know the song?! How is that going to be a beneficial experience for them.

Yes we all go, we clap we smile but in all honesty it does get a bit boring when you have been to a few lol.

Wrong. I’m from Wales. I’ve done endless Eisteddfodau (which can be all day). Loads of school performances. I just like watching kids being creative and think it’s pretty sad when people don’t. Where do you think the professional dancers, singers and actors come from?

My dd did the school talent show every year throughout secondary, plus a drama club play (in French), It's obviously wonderful to watch your own child perform and less so everyone else's so a necessary evil really. I am never sure where mine got her musical ability from and was a very proud mum, but glad those shows are now over.😅

I'm proud as punch when they perform and don't mind watching the rehearsal but some kids do this stuff as a habit and it becomes draining. It's ok to say I can't watch now just practise on your own, if it's a constant thing it becomes a form of attention seeking.

On the first day of a summer holiday in a sunny resort, after about 100 shouts of look a me look at me over an hour or two, i called my kids over. I told them I was delighted to see them jump in the pool, dive, handstand, swim underwater, splash etc etc and that I was finished watching for now and would be looking forward to the last day of holiday where I would watch them play again. It actually worked!!

Dh and I always reference the competitive Dad from the Fast show during kids performances. It makes me chuckle every time.

I love watching my dcs do shows, both the living room shows and the bigger school productions.

Oh I love going to swim meets.

If a club meet I TM but ds is a para swimmer so I have to hold him on the blocks too - so get a good view of all the racing! If national meets I spend my time trying to hide from the you tube camera 🤣

I also live the social side - can talk to other parents at swim meets whereas at a show there is silence!!!

When I was a kid I wrote a screenplay at my dad’s house. He was married to this (genuinely horrible) woman and in the first scene she fell down the stairs and died, haunting the house and terrorising the children. My blatant self insert character came in and did an exorcism and trapped her soul in the toilet. When I went home to my mum she wasn’t super excited to read another one of my badly written plays, but she loved this one. 90% of the plays/dances/short stories my kids write aren’t great but occasionally they will come out with something really funny. I love it when they try and play me and put on awful English accents.

Those of you who are being a teensy bit pious about the need to foster creativity, you do realise that every mum on this thread will be cherishing and supporting their children's endeavours?

It's just that children (quite naturally, quite healthily) can be endlessly egotistical, endlessly fantasising, and endlessly confident of their entitlement to praise and adoration from their parents.

That's fine, of course (up to a point). It's our job to encourage them. But it is also completely fine to feel slightly (and secretly) nauseated by their naive self-absorption, and to want to say (with Austen's Mr Bennett) You have delighted us all quite long enough.

Great post. Totally agree.

Plus my dad got his own back today… we’ve said that we’ll enter one creative writing competition each month in 2026 (the same one). He’s submitted his and sent me a copy - it’s all about his dating life after my mam and him split up (remarried to one another now - don’t ask!) There’s cringe and then there’s CRINGE!

Obviously I have said that it’s a really fascinating take on middle-aged dating and probably not something anyone else will submit.

I now need to bleach my eyeballs and once recovered need to write my own which needs to be in before midnight…

I am so glad those days are over for me. I liked seeing my own kids in concerts. But the ‘ jazz improv’ sections lasted forever. I will never get those hours back.

Some rather po-faced replies here. I love the theatre and concerts as an adult. Watching a bunch of kids perform for hours? Not so much!

How utterly depressing this thread is. This is part of parenting. Get over yourselves.

My granddaughters had a four hour dance recital once I told their mom I couldn’t go anymore

I have to watch mine every sat night with a newly choreographed song. I’m just grateful she can do it-her life looked bleak when she was a baby and no one expected her to be walking and talking.

Do you appreciate comedy?

I know that sounds a bit arsey but it’s clearly meant to be a funny thread and it’s just been taken over by your whingeing.

I was always desperately relieved my DS wasn't into football (or rugby tbf) and have me standing at the side of the pitch in the freezing cold for however long.

Mind you he did play a brass instrument and we went to the group lessons and also concerts and that wasn't bad, except for the show in the theatre which had a group of kids from some primary school playing ukuleles. Now their performance went on way too long centuries

We can look back and laugh now