Do you go to both school plays if they do it twice?

[BabyDoge]

DS4 is doing his first nativity this year. It's a two form entry so they're doing two performances, one in the morning and one in the afternoon. Each family only gets two tickets.

I want to get one ticket for the morning show and one for the afternoon, so that DS has someone in the audience for both. DH wants us to go together. I appreciate in families with single parents you don't always have a choice, but I was just wondering what other people do in this scenario?

There are 2 performances of our daughter’s reception play on 2 different days. We got allocated 2 tickets to one performance (didn’t get a choice of which day) and not allowed any more tickets.

we would do one parent in each if we had the choice though.

Well this thread is an eye-opener! Would never have occurred to me to do anything other than go together with DH to the one that suited us best! (And am of the view that kids don’t need anything else, but now appreciating not everyone shares this perspective 🤪)

No choice. One performance is for the school and one for the parents.

I would only go to one even if there was a choice.

We would go together. It will be very normal for children to only have parents coming to one. Our school only does one performance for families but they do an earlier performance for the school (as in all the children in other classes who don’t do a nativity play). So even then they’ll be doing it without any family in the audience. But I think it’s fine to go to different ones if that is most convenient for work. Dh and I would rather just go together though.

Not at this stage (yet!) however I would go to 1 performance don't see the big deal in having to have someone in the audience for both performances 🤷‍♀️

In my experience as a teacher that's just not the case. It didn't occur to my when our child started school not to go to just one of the showings as a couple. Much nicer to have someone to discuss and enjoy it with.

I went twice simply because I wanted to. I was on leave and got to enjoy it two times. First time he fell off the stage which was very funny (he was unphased), second the kids all ended up in fits of laughter because of some kind of inside joke I still am none the wiser to. Cue whole room in fits of laughter. I'm glad I missed neither of those things.

Equally, there's nothing at all wrong with just going to one. I suspect that's very normal and the kids will be absolutely fine!

I'm surprised that many schools seem to only offer families two tickets to one performance. That must make it tricky for those with smaller children. We did separately at first so someone could look auger the toddler.

I just go to one performance and explain to the kids which one I'll be at and that other kids' parents will enjoy their singing at the other show. This year at pre-school there are three performances! Even DD can't make the third one.

Same! The only reason we might divide and conquer is if we had something clashing so one of us couldn’t make one of the performances!

I think they need to realise parents can't be there for everything. We only went to one. Kids were never bothered as they realised why.

My son is doing his first nativity at school but first performance is for one class parents and the next day is for other class parents.

I’ve always done it where we go to one each as i want DC to know someone is there for them but i think im in the minority in our school who does this. My DC is now in year 3 and I think we’ll just both go to one this time

Thanks everyone, interesting to see how differently people feel on this. I'm leaning towards splitting us for both, at least for his first year. I struggle with mum guilt a lot so I'd rather be over zealous than lying awake at night wondering if he was upset.

Me too.

Single parent here. I go to all performances so I have seen the same things twice on multiple years. The kids always want to see someone (well mine do)

I would just go to one.

Not allowed to, ours is 4 form entry, two performances one for parents from classes a&b and another for parents from classes c&d so we go together. We would anyway unless work meant we couldn't both get to the same performance

They will only miss you if you set the expectation that someone will be there for both showings, make your lives easier and go together. It will help build your child’s confidence and resilience not always having someone there.

This.

Especially as you have described your circumstances.

We've done different things, over different dc and in different years, depending on who can get out of work and when (if either of us could); on whether we've had a baby or toddler at the time; and the like.
But your dh is right, you are really overcomplicating this.
You are both able to go in the morning, then go in the morning. @Wolfpa is spot on.

Our school used to have one performance in the afternoon and one in the evening. There were no official restrictions but the unwritten rule was that you only went once as space was always tight, and that as the evening performance was always busier those who were able to go in the afternoon were asked to do so. There was a better chance of a good view in the afternoon anyway.
I worked part time when my DC were that age so I usually managed to arrange my week so that I was off that day and I went to the afternoon. DH would then go to the evening performance. Most people seemed to do something similar though there were definitely couples who both went to one performance together - usually the evening. And a few people did go to both.
Once or twice neither of us could get there in the afternoon and I don't think our children really noticed to be honest. As long as there was someone waiting to collect them at the end they were happy. I wouldn't worry too much about it either way.

@Lindtnotlint

Well this thread is an eye-opener! Would never have occurred to me to do anything other than go together with DH to the one that suited us best!

Same here & no wonder there's a shortage of tickets if some parents want to go twice!

lol that's ridiculous to go to both! Pick one

Same. Seems crazy that some people go to three or four performances. Tickets are limited for ours, because there isn’t usually space for everyone who wants to go, so one person going four times would be selfish as it would prevent three other children’s parents from attending at all. Obviously other schools must have much greater audience capacities.

We used to end up going separately to two different performances because DH could only really go to the evening performance, but if we both went to the evening one together there would be nobody available to look after our other DC - again we were only allowed two tickets.

If we could have both gone to the evening, the performing child would actually have still had their sibling in the audience for the earlier show, as they went to the same school/nursery and tube rest of the school always watched the daytime performance. I don’t think I would have thought about needing a friendly face in the audience both times otherwise though.