Would you let your child miss sports day over anxiety?

[Thepeopleversuswork]

My DD (15) hates competitive sport to the point of phobia. She's not unfit and does some exercise in her own time, but she hates the competitive pressure that gets put on kids at school who are bad at, or even just average at, games at school. Her school is really big on certain sports.

She's in a 'house' with a bunch of particularly competitive girls for sports day who she thinks don't like her and have unilaterally assigned her to do a particular running race which she's not comfortable with and she feels she's being set up to fail so they can pick on her for being shit.

I'm in two minds about how to handle this: I'm not a fan of encouraging children to sit things out if they are difficult and am generally a firm believer in the idea that tackling hard things and surviving them builds resilience. But her aversion to this is really extreme and there seems to be a slightly bullying edge to the approach these girls are taking. I sympathise as I also loathed the culture around PE at school and the 'all or nothing' approach to competing. It's very alienating for children who aren't good at games or just don't prioritise them.

She's begged me to allow her to pull a sickie for sports day. I've suggested speaking to her form teacher to allow her to be put in a different group but she's adamant that it will be obvious why this has happened.

Would you let your child sit this out?

Reading other comments on this thread has been helpful in that I enjoyed sports in junior school.
But at secondary school I didn't have a clue how to play tennis, I wasn't very fast at running and I wasn't sporty. I was often one of the last people picked when picking teams, hated cross country, found sports day humiliating, felt bullied and humiliated by the sports teachers. I would love to tell them now that they took an enthusiastic, capable child and thoroughly put me off sports for life. I enjoyed sports in juniors so thanks to them for that.

I now enjoy swimming, walking, a bit of badminton but that's it.

It affected the way I felt about my body, my confidence in general.

OP I'm so glad you listened to your daughter. Yes there's something to be said for trying, giving it a go etc. But there's also a lot to be said for advocating for yourself. Listening to your daughter and hearing her. The world won't stop if she doesn't partake in sports day. She's not going to learn an amazing lesson, gain the sporting respect of those girls. She would of been stressed, possibly embarrassed and upset.

Wishing her a lovely alternative sports day

Being a teenager, dealing with spots, feeling dumpy at times, periods etc let's up the fun factor by making teenage girls run around the woods in large blue knickers with a tiny skirt over the top. What the fuck was that about.

They have anxiety about English and Maths lessons every single day, laughed at when they can’t read out loud in class. They don’t have the option to sit out or stay home

Pupils can't sit out of PE lessons either. They get laughed at when they're crap at games. Or they're unable to climb the ropes or get a ball in a net.
That's not the equivalent of a sports day. That's just their class not the whole school plus parents.

No it isn't. How many parents watch exams/tests? It isn't the same thing at all.

If it was optional, it would give the children good at sports even more opportunity to shine.

Yes, I would.

They're obsessed with a rigid, set number of (usually) ball-related sports. I'm dyspraxic - I cannot do anything that involves hand-eye co-ordination. But I CAN run and run and run...

And yet you are still expected to join in, try your hardest, rise to the challenge and see it as character building when you do badly in front of hundreds of people. Maybe more than a thousand if it's a high school.

Imagine we did this for the children with academic struggles. Put the dyslexic kids and the kids with mild LDs up on the stage and told them it was character building to take part in a Spelling Bee. Or a quick-fire times tables test, or put them on a team where they have to answer questions in a 'university challenge' type format, up against the clever kids and in front of everybody's parents.....Or insisted that every child should sing out loud in front of the entire school and then voted on who was best to worst.

All of that would be roundly condemned as cruel and unfair, and let's be honest, with no benefit to anyone whatsover. No child should be forced to publicly perform in the areas where they are least competent and least confident, then be so obviously measured against the more able or talented students in such a humiliating way. And yet when it comes to sports day it seems to be considered a good thing. . I don't get it.

Public humiliation - everyone jeering at you as you limp home last in the 800m, literally in front of every other child in the school - does NOT build character or resilience. Yet that's exactly what the OP's DD has been set up for.

You have a very old fashioned view of what makes for resilience. I skipped sports day. I am a massive over-achiever in other aspects of my life, and have stuck out doing the hard stuff to get there. I expect my kids to do similar (and, in fact, they have and are).

But I don't allow them to be set up for something that will destroy rather than build confidence (and yes, resilience).

DS2 is going to come down with a bad case of “phyiscs revision would be vastly more beneficial for him” come sports day. Not his thing, not sporty enough that he’ll get todo anything.

It’s nothing todo with resilience, he is an incredibly resilient young man. He just has better things to be doing.

I don't think setting her up to fail is something I'd be complicit with.

Let the poor kid stay home - or take a day's holiday yourself and go out together.

so proving my old fashioned point assidiously, mine without rancour,
or recourse to any personal insulting remark/s

Sorry, I didn't mean to upset you (genuinely) and wasn't being snarky. It just struck me as a very old fashioned view (you know: stiff upper lip, push down your emotions, don't show weakness etc.).

That's the kind of view I grew up with, and I was 100% forced to do humiliating things in the name of resilience.

Yet they did the opposite. I genuinely thought there was something wrong with me, that I was somehow deficient, because I couldn't do sports. And that feeling was reinforced by the public aspect of it: hundreds of kids laughing and/or shouting at me for being last/being shit.

It turned out, decades later, that I am dyspraxic. My brain doesn't work when it comes to hand-eye co-ordination. It took me YEARS to learn to ride a bike and to drive, for example. Yet I have 3 degrees at the highest level, am a published author, have set up and run successful start-ups etc. - all of which require a tonne of resilience. And I'm also a trail runner in my 50s, a sport I love because it doesn't involve much co-ordination and zero public humiliation.

But - I am sorry if I offended you as that wasn't my intention. There was no rancour, honest.

To be fair, more often than not, the parents and some of the kinder kids are cheering the 'limper' on. Which is sweet and encouraging but also patronising. I'm sure the person being cheered would rather a giant hole would swallow them up than the torture of knowing that all that attention is on them and only them as they make it to the finish line 9 and half minutes later than everyone else.

Yep. My disabled son calls it the 'loser clap' and says it's a reason why he doesn't take part in the parts of PE he may be able to do. He doesn't like it one bit.

I think you’re probably in the minority though. When I was at school probably a 1/3 broadly love/enjoy it, a 1/3 go along with it and 1/3 hated it.

A bit like if you did a whole day of music, with kids showing off various feats of musicianship. Great fun for the musically inclined/talented, but pretty hellish for those who aren’t.

I agree. I think a mostly non-competitive fun sports day probably has a place at primary school. More of an outdoor fun day activity than anything else. But in secondary school it seems a pretty ridiculous thing to make students go through. As you said, imagine doing similar with a bunch of 15 year olds in Maths or music or art or foreign languages.

You sound amazing! Perhaps the onlookers were not jeering at all,
only urging you on?
I well remember all the sportsday angst, the hurdles! terrifying, running
in terrible heat as it seemed then, tall with long legs more expected of me
when the shorter heavier muscly girls were the ones who excelled, they
were the girls who wanted to compete, I couldn’t have cared less.

I had to look up dyspraxia. I’m going to research this properly.

My (super clever mathematically inclined) son at eleven still couldn’t
play ball games whatsoever at school as he cannot see a ball coming
toward him for eg., too dangerous a team mate.
This is really interesting, thanks.

You overcame this hampering condition, ‘in spite of not because of’
determination to succeed a motivation.
No one goes looking for public humiliation, which is awful, I wouldn’t wish
this on any child/teenager, really.
Thank you for your detailed heartfelt response, giving me a chunk to think on,
it’s too hot to quarrel and I’m glad we parted on good terms.

It comes up in most sports day threads. I'm always interested how often it gets mentioned by people who haven't even considered that the kids on the end of it might not always experience it positively.

How nice to have two people being so civil and magnanimous and understanding of one another's POV on a thread, even after a disagreement. What a rarity!

Ah yes the “loser clap” - DS2 hates that with a passion. When he was much younger we once had to escort him quickly from the field before he had the most epic sense of humour failure.

The thing that nearly tipped him over the edge was a parent coming up to him and saying “he was such a good sport”. Thankfully eight year olds don’t tend to say “Fuck off you patronising clown” - even if they are thinking it.

If they are so super competitive I'm surprised they want your DD to compete at a race she's poor at when she could do long jump. A super competitive group would want the maximum points for their house.

I would pull my kids from every single sports day personally. It’s a whole load of messed up. Forcing kids to compete against one another, like they’re bloody horses on a racecourse.

Public humiliation - everyone jeering at you as you limp home last in the 800m, literally in front of every other child in the school - does NOT build character or resilience. Yet that's exactly what the OP's DD has been set up for

Someone has to come last. That's the nature of the sport. There will be one winner and nobody will remember who came 2nd or 3rd plus one looser, that in equal measure nobody will remember.

People really read to much into this.

No reason to think DD is the best available for the long jump. As she's only ok at it, there could be a better candidate.

You could suggest to your DD that when she leaves the school she could write to them explaining in her own words why she bunked off. Might be empowering for her.

I was your daughter at school OP. I dislike 'team sports' and wasn't interested in them. An alien concept unfortunately by most children and PE teachers! I'm 51 now, and still dislike 'team sports'!! So my opinion hasn't changed. I wasn't particularly sporty, didn't like most sports and wasn't great at sports either. Always picked last, moaned at constantly by the other children and made to feel crap.

So yes, I absolutely wouldn't hesitate to let your daughter stay off school for sports day. Being constantly belittled and moaned at, isn't going to help your daughter's self-esteem, and it will make her even more anxious.