AIBU to continue with this FARCE? (Teens and extracurricular activites)

[paulinepolos]

My 18 year old daughter is currently doing her Gold Duke of Edinburgh Award, yet finishing it has been impossible. She has completed the sufficient Skill, Volunteering and Physical sections, yet to qualify for the full thing she needs to do an Expedition. This has proven difficult. We are registered with an Open Award Centre, which unfortunately is not very accommodating.

They called my daughter up this Spring for training for an Expedition, yet she was placed in a group of 6 private school kids who already knew each other and made for a toxic group dynamic cos she was left out. They did not bother to make meal plans, sleeping arrangements etc. They also were taller and had a greater standard of fitness than my daughter. My daughter is 5foot tall and about 10 stone. She is reasonably fit for a girl her age, swims twice a week and goes for a run on the weekends, yet this Expedition is a totally different beast. She has walked 10ks every weekend with the same weight in a back pack on relatively flat urban terrain near our house with the proper boots, and yet she is struggling to walk, out of breath and has burns and cuts on her feet. The Assessor then says the group is going to the Peak district, which I was not happy about. As of 2023, the DofE website says you can do it in an urban environment, which my daughter would prefer and I would feel better letting her go alone on. I feel unsafe letting her go into the middle of nowhere with kids who are very cliquey and leave her out. The expedition also was said to take place in June, which I think is stupid cos of the risk of fainting, burns, insect bites/stings, heat stroke, especially dangerous using fires/gas stoves. I would rather she goes in the autumn or winter. She also is not allowed her mobile phone, or allowed to see me at any time of the day.

I have now withdrawn from doing this Centre`s expeditions as I do not think they are appropriate for my daughter. I have looked into Private Expeditions, but these are for teenagers who are generally disabled, and use boats or other "cheat" methods of transport which my teen is not happy about using. No where seems to offer urban/suburban/coastal routes with minimum elevation. I then suggested to the centre doing our own Expedition with 3 friends, in an urban environment, and apparently you need a trained and qualified Assessor and Supervisor (not parent or under 18). Sometimes I wonder if its worth doing the DofE at all, the only reason we are doing it is because my daughter received incredibly poor GCSE results in summer 2025, cant be bothered to resit them, and she needs equivalent qualifications to show an employer or give her a chance of getting a decent job.

Any ideas what to do? And have you faced similar?

I'm a secondary school teacher. There are so many parenting red flags in your post I don't know where to start.

DofE Gold is supposed to be hard work. Loads of kids do Bronze, fewer do Silver, hardly anyone makes it to Gold. It's a real achievement because it's so challenging. Trying to make it less so because your daughter is overweight and can't manage the physical exertion of the expedition is defeating the whole object of the qualification.

Your daughter hasn't got her GCSEs, can't be arsed to resit them, and now you're enabling her to try and take an easy route out of another situation she's got herself into where she's found it more challenging than expected and can't cope. Do you not see the pattern here?

You are a huge part of the problem, OP. Your parenting style is not forcing your daughter to recognise that she needs to step up and put the work in to sort her future out. You can't always be there to fix it for her when life gets hard. She has to start facing reality and you need to be helping her to build resilience.

First things first, she needs to enrol into the local college and get her GCSE Maths and English retakes sorted. She's going nowhere without those. The Gold D of E, as plenty of others have said, is not an equivalent for qualifications and it's not going to be accepted in lieu of basic GCSEs for jobs or apprenticeship schemes. If that's the only reason why she's doing it, then she's wasting her time.

Secondly, she needs support to work out what she wants and to have a goal to work towards that she feels excited about. It sounds like she needs some proper advice and support. The National Careers Service can help, but if she is enrolled at your local college to get those GCSEs done, then they will obviously be the best port of call.

I would also say, gently, you perhaps are in denial that your daughter is quite considerably overweight. Supporting her to adopt a more healthy lifestyle will also go a long way towards building her confidence and energy levels for the next phase of her life.

If she’s getting cut and burnt feet, she must have completely unsuitable footwear. I’ve been on a hike that I had to give up halfway through because I overestimated my fitness / underestimated how the heat would affect me but my feet were fine because I had got properly broken in walking shoes (lots of short walks did not mean I was able to do an steeply uphill longer walk with no shade).

Gold DofE is really hard. Please tell me she’s done Bronze and Silver - going from couch potato to Gold is insane and horrendously unfair to the rest of her group. TBH, I’m not surprised they weren’t the kindest to her - dragging someone completely unable to do the work through the requirements is not one of the DofE challenges they would have anticipated. Maybe they should have been nicer but she shouldn’t have put them in that position.

YABVU It’s gold D of Ed! How do you think you’re going to “see” her every day? Mine were away for 6 days, totally out of contact the whole time.

She can’t “be bothered” to resit essential exams.

Shes 5’ and 10 stone .

D of Ed is the least of her worries.

This 💯

I don’t recommend talking about cheat methods of travel if she joins a network group as there may well be ex sea scouts who did 6/7 hours of activity per day for the expedition in a canoe / sailing on open sea. I did my Silver expedition cycling many years ago - 150 miles in 3 days didn’t seem to me to be cheating, but an alternative to the severe blister damage I got from
every pair of walking boots I put on, and I don’t imagine those who ride for many hours to complete it would consider it an easy way to complete it either.

The whole point of DoE is to develop resilience, stick to something and complete it. You/your daughter seem to have an issue with being able to do this and you seem to be enabling her to drop out over what are relatively minor issues, in the grand scheme of things. This will not help her in the future.

She should be retaking her GCSE AND completing the DoE - support her to do this, not think of reasons why she can't.

How will D of E replace educational qualifications?

in terms of uni some unis do an access course for going to uni

DS did his bronze D of E when he was 15. He was carrying a enormous rucksack, including the tent. He was 5ft 5 and 7.5st at the time and had a lot of rubbing on his shoulders, despite having a decent rucksack. My main worry was that he'd have enough to eat!
They walked 20+ miles across 2 days which I think was standard for the groups at their school, and it was pretty hot, but I wouldnt have wanted him to do it in 35° heat, if im honest. Just from the sheer amount of water they'd need to take.
I was under the impression it had to be in countryside/footpaths etc but im afraid I dont have any experience of independently organised expeditions because we did it with school.

Maybe she should just drop doing it. It’s not the end of the world not to complete a gold DofE in the grand scheme of things.

I think doing it in an urban environment is unusual. Where do you camp? Surely it’s standard not to be able to see your mammy or have a mobile when you are on a DofE expedition.

I agree that OP is babying her DD, however, she very much could have got heatstroke this June!

She can't even be arsed to re-take her GCSEs - do you really think university is the right path for her?

It’s only a matter of time before someone mentions the army…

I cant really see the attraction of this. If kids want to do it then ok. Sounds like an absolute nightmare - no thanks.

If she thinks this will replace or bolster her GCSE’s it really won’t. I interview apprentices and grads and there is limited weight placed on this. It just helps when they can talk about the experiences related to situational / competency based examples. But they can do this with PT jobs, school projects , hobbies etc. She would be better off improving her GCSE grades, boring it maybe but pretty crucial when being shortlisted at entry level.

Is there going to be a drip feed about why the OP has so much involvement/intervention in this? The Peak District is fab btw, a great opportunity.

@paulinepolos my daughter received incredibly poor GCSE results in summer 2025, cant be bothered to resit them, and she needs equivalent qualifications to show an employer or give her a chance of getting a decent job.

This is mumsnet, you don't need to pretend qualifications are important on here.

Every single person with a job understands that qualifications don't mean anything. Your daughter will discover that too after she leaves school.

It’s only a matter of time before someone mentions the army…

While a lot of young people, especially boys, would no doubt benefit from the discipline, I doubt whether the army wants them.

At 5ft and ten stone she sounds quite overweight to me. Maybe she should work on getting properly fit first?

sadly, Duke of ed isnt a substitute for GCSE’s.

At 18, I’d be letting your daughter drive this process, you’re too involved.

all the best to her.

i failed gcses, didnt see the point, then couple years later got to a careers fair, with security services, dtsl, and other military companies, got inspired after a chat with the security services and then applied for uni via access course, and onto a degree.

sometimes you never know

It was my understanding that expeditions are always in hilly terrain, both my DDs went to the Peak District. It sounds to me that there’s more going on here, if she’s not capable of walking 10k on hilly terrain she isn’t the standard of gold award but it’s possible to row, sail, horse ride or paddle, not cheating, my friends son sailed for his

Does your daughter really really want to do the DOE if she’s 18 It just seems the wrong thing for her. Get her to go into her local college and find out what courses are available lots of people leave school without GCSEs this courses their level one or level two that might suit her better.

If your adult daughter can’t do a 2 hour walk in the countryside then I’d be suggesting she get to the GP

Well she certainly could have done this week!

One of mine did her Gold expedition on a yacht. Might be worth looking at? I think it was this one https://www.mst.org.uk/dofe-gold-expedition