4 year old never gets award

[DesperateDad80]

I just wanted to get others' thoughts. My DD is in reception and every Friday her school's weekly newsletter includes 3 awards per year group: perseverance, kindness and work of the week. We are now week 17, so there have been 51 awards handed out since September for her class of 30. My DD is yet to get a single one whereas lots of other children have received 2 or 3 by now. To make things worse, I think I've discovered that every Friday, these awards might be celebrated in a whole school assembly which would mean my DD has now sat through 17 assemblies without a mention. I am completely gutted and fed up with the sinking feeling I get every Friday when I check the newsletter again to see her overlooked. Her only school report this year was absolutely fine. Am I overreacting? Surely, when in reception, children shouldn't be left behind like this unless she's completely awful.

yes, but you have a system to make sure no one is overlooked. If 51 awards have been given out don’t you think all 30 kids should have had one by now?

OP it could be an admin error…I once discovered that a child was missed off the bottom of the printed list we let recording this. It was in about December but tiny classes and multiple awards each week so everyone except her had had 3 or 4. I used to choose usually hy scanning down to see who hadn’t had one recently then choosing from them someone who’d done something good. I only spotted she was missing because she had done something genuinely outstanding so I chose her without looking and realised when I went to record it she wasn’t there. It could easily be something like this.

It’s tricky cos yes it’s just behaviour management but it matters. My daughter got a single PE award in all of y1 (each week a PE and a general award were given, so that’s almost 80 awards a year). She was gutted not to get a general one (v academic, well behaved etc, didn’t visibly need encouragement). Plus, when she got thePE one she actually remarked she’d messed around in PE that week and not tried very hard so has no idea why her teacher chose her!! So it clearly was done somewhat on rotation.

If you call the school and then she gets an award that week it’ll mean nothing. She’ll get one I’m sure, plenty of time.

I’m not saying don’t go and mention it. I would be more interested, as a parent, to find out if there is a reason why. You have said several times that you don’t know how she is behaving at school.. why not?

It means nothing anyway.

But has dd said anything or are your projecting?

A really good school makes sure every child wins something.

Is it possible that she's just a bit mediocre?

Unfortunately the children who just quietly get on, aren’t struggling academically and not naughty, are always back of the queue for any sort of certificates etc. I have two boys, both very academic, both very well behaved, but one is quiet and reserved while the other is outgoing and a very jolly character. The quiet one almost never won anything in primary and still is low on praise points at secondary despite never receiving a single negative point and excelling academically. The outgoing one was often very early in the term getting certificates and awards and was always picked for school maths competitions and Youth Speaks debates right from KS1, even though he is no more able than his brother.

This accurately reflects life where things come easier to extroverts than to introverts. I just really really talked up the intrinsic value to being well behaved & doing well in school.

You’re completely missing the point of these awards 🙄.
They’re not for achievements so to speak , these kids are 4 !!!
They’re to Instill confidence in children, an incentive to like coming to school .
It’s absolute rotten behaviour that this little girl never gets rewarded for being kind or anything .
Shame on those teachers .
Every Friday this little child sees all the others around her be given an award & it’s never her turn , in her little head that must be awful .
I’d 💯 OP be bringing it up with them .
I’m not saying be confrontational obviously, but it needs to be addressed.

Imagine thinking any 4 year old could be mediocre. I feel sorry for you.

When my DD was feeling similar I encouraged her to ask her teacher what she could do to earn an award. I didn't want to be "that" parent asking for their DC to get an award, and wanted to teach her to be assertive in getting herself seen / heard. I thought it might also just alert the teacher to the fact that DD hadn't had anything yet in case she hadn't realised. It seemed to work, she got one shortly after!

The thing is, I sometimes wonder why on earth teachers do this stuff. It sounds good in theory but so often having star of the week / similar leads to children being disappointed. Unless it is managed extremely well (and, if some children are on multiple awards but one or two are yet to get their first, this isn’t managed well), it upsets the parents too.

To be fair, I feel the same way about those mad “build a Viking longship” projects. The best and kindest thing to do in that case is write an honest account of how long it took over the weekend and how many times the child (or mum) cried. If teachers actually saw how this stuff goes down at home, it may be done a bit differently.

There are still another 3 terms to go

if nothing after Easter and 6w left of school year then bring it up

someone’s child has to be last out of 30

Is it possible to be mediocre at 4?!

I get this for older kids, but we are talking about 4 year olds here! What on earth would constitute a “truly outstanding” achievement?! 🤣

To address a couple of these, I did gently raise this, very much with the angle of whether there is anything we can do to help her exhibit these qualities. Was simply told she's doing fine etc... My gripe, as others seem to agree with, is her age. If she was older, we could have conversations with her, but she's 4. Think I am more gutted than her, I'll admit that, but there was something she said which made me think that these awards were being announced every week in front of all the kids (trying to confirm this) which made me worried for her if she's continously overlooked. Yes, awards need to be merited, but others in her class have had 3 awards to her none. Seems a bit shit at reception age. I'm not a parent who ever intends to put my kids on a pedestal and God knows how things will go for her in the future. Just worried for the here and now and I want her to feel valued and develop confidence. Thanks for supportive messages and honest feedback.

The awards themselves are meaningless but it's horrible for the kids who get left out as out often upsets them.

Having had 2 kids at the same primary, several years apart, I noticed the same pattern. The kids who got the awards were typically in the following categories.

1. Golden children who did well academically but were very vocal about wanting to win and very upset if they didn't .
2. Naughty or challenging children who needed motivation to behave. (I speak without malice, my son was one of these types)
3. Children whose parents were on the PTA or made generous voluntary donations to school.

Kids most likely to be missed off were those who did well academically but weren't as loudly competitive as type 1, fairly quiet and well behaved. It's like they were no trouble anyway so the school didn't need to bother helping them happy with awards.

My daughter was one of those. Close to top of the class, I would be told every parents evening she's so polite, no trouble, really capable but ... still no awards.
She then got into grammar school and has been amazed by the number of merit marks and amount of praise coming her way.

I think you need to get some perspective. Being gutted and having a sinking feeling over effectively a sticker to reward those who need a bit more encouragement isn’t reasonable.

You need to get used to your kid missing out sometimes - that’s life.

My kid plays category one football. Highest possible level for years and years. Premier League football. He didn’t win his senior school football award. Seriously. Did he get upset or cry? Were we gutted or devastated? No. We thought is was funny. When he was younger he didn’t get PE star of the week and asked what he could do to improve it and they said improve his football (see point above).

Let it go.

Oh I hate this and I know how you feel, I remember feeling the same with my son over a similar thing. I’m glad I didn’t raise it to be honest, I just taught him at home that sometimes things are unfair etc. there’s plenty of time through life when things will be great for them but they’ve also learned how to feel a bit disappointed. If she hasn’t got one by the end of the whole year I would quietly tell the school how unfair that is and you don’t believe that out of 39 weeks she hasn’t been kind or done something fab at least once and maybe an award may have given her a bit of a boost.

My concern is it's more than a sticker - the awards I think are announced in assembly. And it may be that she could do with encouragement - I've never professed to her being a perfect schoolgirl.

Let it go.

My kids had all this and they are resilient amazing kids. Yeah the had the assemblies an had to sit through entire awards dos.

Let it go.

oh yes so dull and long and DDs were gutted they didn’t win (they got use to it tho) youngest got one in year 7 for charity work and that was only one. Eldest nether got it. Neither were sporty or top academic, it was always the same ten or so kids getting multiple awards

Same here. Especially at this age, every child got an award before any children got a second.

This happened to my daughter at age 10. It got to June so I knew for sure every single child had got star of the week except her. And at that age she had noticed and told me every Friday that she didn't get it again.
Also at that age she knew it was a rotation thing and so every one should get one which just made her feel worse cos she'd obviously been totally missed.
I ended up sending a note in and she finally got it 2 weeks before the end of the year.
For something that supposed to encourage them, they can really deflate a child as well.

I change tack from asking in a roundabout way if there’s anything she can work on at home, to straight up saying it’s been 17 weeks now, there are 3 awards per week and 30 children, so why have some children had more than one and my child has had zero? It can be upsetting for little ones to think they’re being left out, and if she is cheeky at school then you want to know, if she’s being overlooked then you want to know.