Whether good or bad sports day provokes emotions and memories. Winners, losers, personal bests, those that enjoy and those that dread. It has bit of a ‘marmite feel’ to participate in and to watch.
“It’s the taking part that matters most not who wins and looses,” is what we say to our children. Although there’s a moment of pride when your child does beat the competition and winning feels great. Celebrating achievements and hard work is a good thing and it’s healthy for children to know they cannot win at everything. They need to learn to be ‘good losers’ too. It’s great to see other children cheering for and sharing team success.
Sports day provokes strong emotions for me personally. Looking back to H’s preschool days there was nothing sweet, cute or fun about that morning! Chasing him into the bushes, begging him to participate and an early exit was not fun. There were lots of pieces to the jigsaw puzzle of us realising H has significant needs- sports day was a large corner piece for me.
This past Thursday was H’s school sports day and we decided to give it a go after him not managing last year.
It was amazing!
He participated in every event, had a big smile, managed to have us there and leave again. This achievement was a real team effort from those behind the scenes to the members of staff on the day who had the energy and encouragement to make it happen.
It was a real highlight that so many other parents, friends and family noticed H’s achievement and it felt like a class celebration. The taking part was really what mattered!
To help H we suggested he wore some sunglasses. Although they were broken (and pineapple shaped) they seemed to make a difference as I think he felt people couldn’t see him when they were on.
It’s really not without hope, seeing this sports day reminded us what a difference a year makes!
