Withdrawing from PE lessons

[Geordie2Mam]

Its a long-winded post, so thanks in advance of you manage to stick with it.
My 14 year old, is struggling with PE. It has been an ongoing issue for over 1 year.
She does not get along with several of the PE teachers & the ones she does get on with, teach a higher level, so aren't available to her.
She has not done a full lesson in at least 6months due to ongoing issues.
The latest episode included a teacher saying that if she had forgotten her kit, then she would have to do participate with the boys PE lesson, to "make her feel as uncomfortable as possible".
We have emailed the school & are awaiting a reply. In the mean time we have said that we are not happy for her to participate in these lessons, until this is sorted out.
Our concern is that, these issues have been rumbling on for months now. Things improve for a short while & then we are back in the same situation. She is excelling in all other areas of her education.
Can we request that she is permanently removed from PE lessons? We're aware that it is a compulsory lesson, however at what point does her emotional wellbeing take precident? What happens for other pupils that just refuse to participate in certain lessons?

Of course you can't. The school rules around this are the same as if you wanted o withdraw her from maths . Her emotional well being doesn't come in to it.

When I was at school my friend was withdrawn from PE. Officially for religious reasons but in reality because her parents couldn't read or write in English so her older brother wrote the school notes for them. Back then a note from a parent/guardian could excuse you from anything so my friend never did anything she didn't want to at school.

At my dc school PE is compulsory in all circumstances. Which I initially thought was quite harsh but when my dc was recovering from an operation and couldn't do sports the school were great with him, creating a bespoke version of PE just for him that he could participate in.

Do you know what part of PE your child struggles with? There are lots of things the school can do to help.

We have withdrawn our DS14 from
games. It was a whole afternoon of hell for him, often involving away matches which made it double hell. He is severely dyspraxic and just could not cope. He was missing whole days as he was visiting with anxiety when he knew games we coming, which affected other areas of learning and his social inclusion.

He still happily participates in PE and dance, which are shorter lessons, often table tennis or basketball.

As an alternative, I collect him from school after lunch and he then has a one to one Parkour session and practices touchtyping. He also does martial arts three times a week so is pretty fit.

It has worked very well for us and we won try to resume games lessons now, although he may join in cricket training in the summer term.

You haven’t really told us what the issue with PE is? In your example your daughter forgot her PE kit, that was her responsibility to remember, hopefully she won’t forget next time.

If you remove your child from
lessons they don’t like, or classes with teachers they don’t ‘get along with’ then at what point do they learn to adapt, to stick with hard things and find solutions to make them
more bearable? Obviously I’m not advocating leaving your child in an environment that is causing them actual harm, but your child is not being harmed, she just needs to remember her kit and get on with the lesson.

I can’t work out what the problem is here either. If she’s refusing to listen to teachers because she doesn’t like them and refusing to bring her kit and leaving lessons halfway through… perhaps her teachers don’t like her for good reason. If she’s being bullied or has learning disabilities or something else then maybe there’s something you need to get support for to allow her some accommodations in how she participates.

My (ND) daughter’s PE class is 20 boys and 5 girls. The boys are a nightmare and won’t pass the ball to her, make fun of her and her friend no matter what they do, follow her after class to mock her… etc etc etc. I haven’t asked to remove her from class as it’s important to stay fit and active (I refused to go to PE and it affected my life later and I’m now very unfit and overweight). I asked them to consider if the girls could join another class or they could mix them. I asked for a teacher to be present in the hallway after the lesson so my daughter could get away safely. I asked for accommodations, not the ability to just skip it.

What’ll happen when she starts work and has a manager she doesn’t get on with? And she doesn’t like restocking the cake shelves but is ok with the fruit and veg aisle?
She needs to learn resilience and that some situations can’t be avoided. Teaching her otherwise is not setting her up for th world of work.

The problem is your daughter not getting on with certain teachers. She’s not going to school to get on with the teachers and she can’t dictate what lessons she fancies doing. You can’t withdraw her.

I agree with others. Not liking rhe teacher is not a good reason.

However I am 65 and without a sporting bone in my body and pribably dyspraxic to a degree but never diagnosed. DD is 27 and very dyspraxic.

Times may have changed but dd's exoeriences were little better than mine. The last one on the bench, the constant humiliation, the bullying and snarky comments from the nasty girls. At least for dd the teachers didn't bully so much and there was no insistence on everyone showering comoletely naked and the PE teacher standing at the exit to the communal showers to make sure they had. A PE teacher with a short back and sides who wore lace up brogues in the early 70s.

PE isn't always positive and it doesn't always support life long fitness. I developed migraine the evenings before games days, dd developed anxiety.

If there was overt bullying because a child had dyslexia or dyscalculia and was bottom of the class it would not be tolerated.

The only time I refused was when dd was in 6th form. A 6th form partially chosen because PE was not compulsory. This was changed in Y13. Neither DD nor I were amused. The conversation with the head of PE, who in usual PE mistress way, woukd not hear or understand. I took it to the head and we agreed that dd could participate in Yoga or swimming if she wished. There was a little more leverage because the school was fee paying.

Neither dd nor I have ever encountered issues at work because we aren't sporty or disengaged from PE.

Why is your daughter unable to do a full lesson of PE?

Attitudes like this are why kids (and the adults they grow into) have no resilience these days.

My daughter has severe dyscalculia. She will never be able to do maths and obviously she doesn’t enjoy it. She still does maths lessons and we make it as bearable as we can.

What can’t be cured must be endured. This applies to little things and big, but if they don’t learn how to endure the little things now, the big ones throughout life will come as a terrible shock.

is your daughter neurodivergent ?

everyone has to do things in life that they don’t like or don’t want todo.
Shes 14…needs to grow up a bit

Am I the only one to find that the teachers’ comment to make her do PE with the boys is out of place and from another century??? Of course she doesn’t get on with them if that’s the sort of things that are said by so called professionals!

This, it put me off sport altogether, I only came back to it in my 30s and love it now, really regret the lost time.

Not sure this approach works though? I was dragged through maths and my heart rate speeds up with panic when DD starts talking about her maths lessons to this day. No one would describe me as a shrinking violet but maths can make me cry embarassingly quickly! I was fine with it at primary school and a kind teacher NURSED me through GCSEs successfully so i cant help but think a bit of understanding might be a better tactic.

Here is your answer.