AIBU to be pissed off at ds's sports day allocation?

[basildonbond]

Ds is in Y10 he has ASD, dyspraxia and low muscle tone. He is 6'3" with a 24" waist and his arms and legs look like twiglets - he has an air of fragility as if a gust of wind could carry him away.

His school has sports day next week and the children are allocated an event - they can't choose. Ds has been put down for the shot put. Yes, really ...

Dh thinks someone in the PE department is deliberately taking the piss and wants me to go in all guns blazing. I have no intention of letting ds be utterly humiliated so am going to keep him off school on Monday. WWYD?

don't see

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Field events are usually tucked away in a corner - hardly anyone will be watching and throwing a shot put is over in seconds; your ds can be involved without humiliation

Also, if the school have never taught them shot putt in a lesson (do you really monitor the content of every PE lesson that closely?) then everyone in that part of the competition will be in the same boat / be having the same difficulty.

Like others have said, in my dcs school it's not the PE dept that decide who is doing each event anyway - it's the person (pupil) picked to pick the team that year.

I wouldn't keep any of my dc off school because they weren't going to do well at something - what kind of a lesson does that teach them?

Let's all second guess the teachers because our children are special.

No. Let's all take into account special needs that might affect how a child/person should be treated. I can't think why this seems to be SO hard for SO many to comprehend .

A friend of mine was always forced to play rugby at (grammar) school - he was nearly 6" and weighed about 8 stone.

Just as well he was a good runner, he just used to run away if the ball came anywhere near him. Tackles from other players meant he'd be covered in bruises for a week. If he'd ended up at the bottom of a scrum he'd have been squashed completely flat.

Never picked for running though...

Fucksake. DD has never done competitive stuff. She just doesn't get it. She likes to be good at stuff but the relative ability is irrelevant. If I say she's good at something that's fine. Demonstrating that in public is anathema. She has a fabulous singing voice. Will she sing in public? No. She's badly co-ordinated and hates PE. She has ASD.
They don't make children with other disabilities show off their inability. Long jump for the child in a wheelchair?

I think the op is using special needs as an excuse. Having ASD is not an excuse to be a spoilt brat and get out of educational experiences you don't like. Using ASD as an excuse to bunk sports day is the sort of behaviour that gives people with autism a bad repruation. What kind of lesson are you teaching him that he can get out of stuff he doesn't like by throwing a sickie.

I can see that a child with severe autism may well struggle with lack of routine on sports day or anxiety. Is the anxiety of not doing well the op or her son's? He might not realise he is useless at shot put if he has never done it before. Shock horror! He might even enjoy it. No one will see op son throwing his shot put. The other boy from all accounts is also useless at games. Perhaps the pe staff are trying to hide both boys away in the corner to avoid humiliation for both. Not all pe teachers are nasty.

If there are real reasons for avoiding sports day then they should be discussed with the school senco.

What an ignorant post ReallyTired. Hopeless to even bother addressing it so I won't bother. Suffice to say you sound utterly clueless and you should be embarrassed to have posted it.

Camel are you a parent at the same school or are you making assumptions?
My NT dc would absolutely be told to give it a whirl. And probably suck it up if he was crap. It is a parallel universe.

ODFO ReallyTired. Spoilt? You know fuck all love. Spoilt children milk the attention. Children with ASD hate it.I hate the fact that when DD is having a meltdown I am telling her to go away and calm down. When she's physically hurt I can't touch her. She needs to go and stop her senses.
Routine and anxiety are part of it but they are only part of it.

Ha,ha Really tired we never see hide nor hair of our Senco.

My dd has hypermobility,sensory issues and possible dyspraxia. Sports 'week'(oh the joy) is an absolute nightmare for her and heart breaking as a parent. Seeing her sob the other side of a field when you can't do anything and the upset at home as to why she has to be so "useless" is shit.You have no idea.

Really feel for you op. I don't think it'll be a malicious allocation but I would ring and get it changed if needs be. My dd was allocated the swimming gala( even though she repeatedly told them she didn't want to do it) and I simply sent a note in saying she wasn't doing it and why. She said the whistle going off was scary and all the screaming,coming last and sinking was horrible.After two nights of sobbing I'm afraid I did what was best for my child. I see no educational benefit of forcing her into something she finds scary and humiliating. You wouldn't force a child struggling with spelling into a spelling bee in front of hundreds of screaming parents and children.

The lack of empathy re kids who struggle with PE never fails to amaze me.

The lack of understanding on this thread is shocking.

I'm trying to write a coherent response to ReallyTired and failing, so I think it will suffice to say I'm disgusted at the ignorance

Dd was chosen to do shotput at athletics having never done it before. She was nervous but it actually turned out OK because a) no one was really watching (not like coming last in a race). b. , no one else had really done it before and c) the ball is not a proper heavy Olympic style ball, She is tall and has long arms so she actually threw it pretty far.

My son, who is unusually small and not that strong, was also put in the shot put team. We did wonder about it but our son thought it was funny. He was over the moon when his team won as he had been partnered with some hulks who recorded the biggest throws by far. We had a good laugh about it. It sport's day, not Maths A level, for Pete's sake - people need to stop indulging the pretence that it actually matters.

The difference it PUBLIC. Why should you have to do something you're not good at in front of a crowd? There would be uproar (quite rightly) at public spelling tests or maths tests, and you would never ask someone who can't sing to do a solo - If doing something poorly in public is character building, why not? Great if you're not the self conscious type, but many of us are, and it does feel humiliating. I would ask the PE teacher for their rationale - maybe it was because they thought it would be tucked away. Is there anything he wouldn't mind doing? Could you ask for him to do that? If no joy, obviously, an emergency dental appointment will be necessary.

I think it's a shame that PE departments don't focus more on encouraging children to find a type of exercise that they enjoy and can carry on into adulthood.
There is a place for competitive sports for those kids that enjoy them but many of us are not sporty and cannot succeed at them.
In your particular circumstances I'd be very tempted to keep your DS off school and calmly let the PE dept know why.

There isn't a 'crowd' watching the shot put though! I did in fact wander past the shot put event at ds1's sports day recently (he'd been chosen for the long jump nearby). I think I spotted about 15 boys (half of whom were chatting and not watching), 2 teachers and about 4 parents (there were only 6 parents watching the long jump). There were literally hundreds of people watching the track events though - it's an impressive school with a 'showpiece' track. I totally understand the embarrassment of coming last in a track event with everyone watching and the thought of participating in a swimming gala where there's 'no escape' would horrify any child who's not good at swimming but nobody cares about the shot put - it's looked on as a fun event!

What event did the op's son participate in last year and how did he cope?

It sounds like some of the schools need to think about how they organise their sports days. DDs I feel gets a good balance. The class sports captain negotiates the teams for the traditional events, maximum of one track, one field and one relay per person. The track events are in the afternoon in front of an audience (parents and pupils not in a track event). The field events are in the morning (no audience) and all pupils not participating in any traditional event do a selection of "wacky races" run by the sports leaders. These earn points for their class for participation.They vary from year to year but are things like egg and spoon, passing a ball along the team , tug of war etc. Everyone does something but for the non sporty it is no more threatening than a normal PE lesson. And the afternoon audience do not know which of the watching/supporting pupils were non sporty or expert triple jumpers.