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I have now withdrawn from doing this Centre`s expeditions as I do not think they are appropriate for my daughter.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?

So she can’t be bothered to redo her GCSEs so is doing DoE which requires a lot of team and extreme walking which she also doesn’t like?

You are babying her. Shes 18. She has to fight her own battles. Also, no employer is going to think the DoE is equal to GCSEs. She’d have been better off redoing her GCSEs in the evening than this .

Suppose she could walk up and down Forest and Gypsy Hill and hopefully not give up and take the bus to Thornton Heath. Might be a bit hairy getting through the crowds trying to buy their weekly shopping at the big Tesco's once she's off the 450 at the Clocktower, though.

Seems the daughter has a BMI of 27, which is overweight but not excessively so, and honestly unless there is some major additional need that we don't know about, people with a BMI of 27 and above do hikes like that all the time. Might not be fast, might need rests on the hills, but she really isn't so overweight that it isn't possible. I remember all of us complaining about the weight of the packs... it's not supposed to be the army, but it's also not supposed to be an easy, gentle stroll.

I know LOADS of people in very good senior positions who have completely mediocre 2:1 or 2:2 degrees, from average universities, in non-specific fields.

A students work for C students.

I have a 2:1 from a bog-standard university but that’s a qualification. The OP hasn’t said her DD has Bs and Cs (whatever the new number equivalent is). She’s said she needs to do resits which implies she didn’t pass.

The people I manage need to have a minimum of a C in Maths and English. That’s pretty standard.

@BeingATwatItsABingThing She’s said she needs to do resits which implies she didn’t pass.

Did she say that? Maybe DD got average grades, and the parent wants resits because their expectations are too high?

She won’t do resets perhaps GCSEs aren’t the right thing for her. She needs to be advised to go to a college herself and sort things out for September.

No, OP has disappeared completely.

Most people only mention resits for failed exams rather than just a lower grade than they’d like. Yes, I’m making an assumption (I literally said it implies) but it’s the most likely answer.

We are not talking about graduates or even A levels - OP's dd failed her GCSEs and doesn't want to resit them

This whole post feels odd. I wonder if it's real.

No, not even a little bit real. Brand new poster too.

Did she fail her GCSEs?

This can’t be real. People can’t be this clueless surely?!

DofE, like GCSEs, are not for everyone.

Op said she got “incredibly poor” GCSE results. Given the attitude of can’t be bothered to resit them, and wanting to make the DofE easier, I can’t see it being a case of Mum thinks a C is an incredibly poor result and needs to resit to get an A* can you?