Dolly's blog: Sports Day

I bloody hate sports day.

It's a month since this year's ordeal and I'm still experiencing symptoms of trauma.

I attend religiously, contorting myself to accommodate it alongside work stuff, smiling so supportively my jaw aches and clapping in all the right places. Glossing over the fact I missed my daughter's race having legged it to the pavilion when the cream tea was finally served, I hope (perhaps deluding myself) that the kids are oblivious to my misery.  But inside a part of me is dying.

Applying the reflective learning principles I'm advocating at work, my analysis of the primary factors which lie behind my aversion is as follows:

1.  Other parents.

Some of my best friends are other parents - but my word a sports day can bring out some unpleasant behaviour.

Cheering your child from the side-lines? Absolutely. Barging your way onto the finish line with the teachers so you can immediately congratulate your child and video the entire race on your iPad? Not sure. Spending lots of time coaching your offspring in the run-up to sports day (whilst pretending you don't take it seriously)? Hmm. Looking unbelievably smug as you struggle to carry all your children's trophies? Ugh.

In the category of utterly unacceptable is a father this year who actually said (without a flicker of irony and definitely without humour) "If you don't win then don't bother coming home!". This was followed by an instruction bellowed to the mother to "Get to the other side of the track! Lucius needs support all the way around!".  It has to be said their son won by a mile, but it's taking me some time to recover.

2.  Child humiliation.

I'm not anti-competition. I'm a lawyer after all! So I don't subscribe to the "everyone's a winner" school of competition-avoidance and I do believe in facilitating a sense of achievement for the winners and building resilience for the losers.

But when coming last crosses over the line into humiliation then my stomach churns.  I’ve concluded that in a running race there's only so much behind the winner the last child will realistically come.  But with those blimmin "throw 3 beanbags into a hoop" type races a child can be stuck there for ages after their classmates cross the line. I find it excruciating.

Most traumatic of all this year was the skipping race.  Watching an 8 year old child who couldn't skip finish a full 4 minutes after the other children, sobbing as he did so, was so appalling I quietly cried.  My 5 year old son spectating with classmates was literally open-mouthed in horror as the minutes agonisingly ticked by.  Parents had their hands over their mouths.  It was truly awful and just not ok.

And speaking of awful, don't get me started on the mothers' race...

After 19 years of fee earning, Dolly now works in a management role in a London law firm.  Working four days a week she has three children aged 5 to 9, a wonderful (though often absent) husband and a charismatic dog who keeps her sane.