Tips needed for possible disappointment for 10yo DS later

[carocaro]

DS1 is 10 and finds out today if he is in the school cricket team, he was picked yesturday for final try outs today, the teacher said he was a great bowler. He did not make the footy team a few months ago and it was the first time he was properly crushed and so disappointed. I know learning to face and deal with disappointment is something we all have to deal with and he understands that, but it still hurts and makes you feel shit.

He was so enthusiastic about it all last night and this morning and practived with Dad in the back garden for two hours last night.

I feel sick thinking about it, please please God/the universe let him be picked!!

If he does not get picked how can I help him?

Explain that he was unlucky and he shouldn't give up cricket. Tell him an instance of when you didn't get the very thing e.g. a job or invitation to a party and how sad you were but now as a grown up, it's not so bad.

You might want to take him out to eat or plan a special day which you tell him (before he tells you about the team) about when he comes home from school.

Thanks for your advice - he got in!!! He is so delighted and thrilled, am so happy am releived, brilliant!!!!

Great news. Thank goodness for that!

I don't think children think that their parents will worry about such things until they are much older.

I hate that attitude in Primary school sports though.
When my ds was at Juniors, the lead teacher for PE had that kind of attitude - pick the elite, the ones that were already good. Fortunately he has moved on and the new teacher feels the most important thing he can do is get children participating in sport. It's brilliant. Some nights he has 3 different sports teams out and about representing the school.
this isn't about "not being able to cope with failure" this is about 'giving the dcs the opportunities to practice in real match situations, to learn from it, and to improve their game'.
Interestingly, the school has a lot more sports trophies awarded now, than when the previous teacher thought he was running some sort of elite acadamy.

Sorry to hijack your thread carocaro - it's just something I feel passionately about

I agree BFG and I made the point when DS was bumped off the sports page of the school newspaper to 'give someone else a chance to have a go' and I pointed out that this philosophy did not extend to the football team as it was the same children every year picked.

To be fair, DS's school do have lots of after school summer sports clubs for all ages, where they all get to take part, but they do like to move the goalposts when it suits!!

It's funny isn't it how picking the same children for sports seems to be right and acceptable but in other areas it has to be give them all a go?

That's why so many of us hated PE.
Not the only reason, but definitely mine. It was one of the only lessons where low ability was mocked, singled out and individuals were rejected for being crap with the lessons still being obligatory. If I'm crap then let me do extra history FFS. Or find a sport I can do and let me do that. Or have a streaming system so I'm with the other nerds and a nerdy teacher who knows what it feels like.
I wasn't allowed to taunt all those less clever than me in academic subjects, so why wasn't it a level playing field all round?

At my ds school, it's the same kids on the football/athletics/basketball team. It's always been like that. It has long pissed me off and to make matters worse, these kids get to choose teams during regular PE meaning that a popularity contest ensues leaving the 'unwanted' feeling utterly humiliated. God my dd was frequently last picked and my heart broke for her.

We had a similar thing in our primary school with the choir. Very often children were told they weren't good enough to be in the choir. It's not even as if they entered competitions, the choir only sang for the parents, so it didn't matter if there were a few out of tune voices. It was often the case that most of a class got in, and one or two were left out, which I think is cruel. That teacher has now left, and another teacher is in charge of the choir. Now anybody can join, and as long as they come to practice regularly and behave well, they're in the choir.

And we wonder why we've got inactive kids.

Well, the inactive kids bit is partly the school's problem, but as a aprent I found something that my child enjoyed out of school hours that they loved doing and that classed as exercise.
Plus they both regard a three or four mile walk as negligible.
One of the problems with inert children is their equally inert parents.