On Her Very First Sports Day and Being Difficult Parents

Eirsa had her first sports day last Friday and even though it didn't turn up right, as expected, but we managed to pujuk her to join the last 2 of 5 games. For information, she did not 100% participate during the rehearsal either.

It was fun, except that the teachers and parents were rushing to finish all games as it was about to rain (it rained 10 minutes after we completed all 5 games, thank you God!). And. Hmm. The and..

From our observations, the sports day was about the teachers and carers fighting to win each game, not really about the kids. We might sound like difficult parents but you might consider our observations as below :

1) As early as the first game, some kids were not given a chance to participate; being the not-fast-moving kids or not-really-obey-the-rules kids, merely because the teachers wanted to ensure their own team won.
2) These left out children were not given a chance to try the game, even after the game had finished, with the teachers from winning team jumping in excitement and the teachers from the losing team making sad or unsatisfied faces.
3) Teachers interfered during the game by pushing the kids or pulling the children's shirt to ensure they move faster. This, in our opinion was forcing, not encouraging.

I might miss a point or two but those were the obvious ones.

Ok now. Again, we were not being difficult here.

We understand that the playschool had made tremendous efforts organizing the sports day, even though the crowd was rather small, but yes, they should have been receiving sufficient credits. But again, sports day was for the children, thus the focus was on the children. Yes, winning is sweeter than losing but the team spirit is not about winning all the time but to embrace the whole process of striving as a group. Being in a losing team is not bad at all, IF the team has done the best and received adequate support.

We would think that instead of focusing on winning, perhaps the teachers and carers should focus on ensuring that the kids were enjoying the whole process of doing things in team, the concept of team effort and last but not least, the idea of having fun while doing things inside a group.

Let along Eirsa with her bad mood. There was a case where a parent even approached a teacher, telling her that why his son was not given a chance to play in not one game but two. His son had been queuing up obediently but overtook by other kids who were asked to do the task twice. I myself had to pujuk Eirsa and joined her in the final 3 games, to ensure that she had fun during the day, to give her the idea that sports days is not a bad day at all so have fun, baby! Even with my interference in persuading Eirsa to join the games, the teacher still wanted to be selective; re-assigning those children with high tendency to bring glories in the same game, over and over again. During this one game, Eirsa's turn was being replaced with another bigger kid (since the teacher was not confident with Eirsa's mood in participating) and she didn't get to participate in that particular game. Soon after the game has finished, I buat tak malu and still asked her to join the game; to run and hop with me, to put the ring inside the cone and to run back to join her team, as if she was still in the game, just for the sake of having fun. Deep inside I was actually angry. But nah, it's not nice to spoil everybody's mood by making a scene, yes?

And we thought this kind of "culture" doesn't only appear here. You can see the same thing happened here and there.

All in all, it was a good effort in introducing Eirsa with sports day. Thank you to all teachers for this experience, yes it can be improved, but still you were doing good jobs.

Some photos during Eirsa's first sports day. It was good day indeed.

Participants had arrived, organizers were doing final stage of preparation.

Getting in the mood.

The cutie pies were doing some stretching before starting.

But she's still getting into the mood. Awkwardly.  -__-"

And the game was started.

This was the cutest contestant, Elish, Eivie's playmate.

Mommy's trying to get her into the mood.

Still trying, with better progress.

She finally agreed to participate!

And in the next game with a little support and assistance, of course.

Finally doing the final game herself.

Rewarding her with big hug. Well, she actually deserved some candies.