Should I make my child go to sports day?

"Should I make my child go to sports day / swimming carnival / cross country?"

We get this question a lot.

The short answer is: YES.

Watch the video to find out why, and how you can support them to turn a terrible day into a good one. (And maybe change their outlook on life in the process!)

P.S. Find out more about building a Power Perspective in our book Raising Girls Who Like Themselves or our signature program Brave Parents Academy.

Transcript

Should you make your child go to sports day, the swimming carnival, the cross country?. We get this question a lot. And the short answer is yes. For a couple of reasons. The first one is in life, our kids have to do things that they don't want to do. That's just part of life. So rather than protecting them from the discomfort of doing something they don't want to do, we need to gently support them to learn to deal with that discomfort. Because as they go into teenage years and adulthood, you don't get to just opt out of things that don't make you feel comfortable. So that's the first one. The second one is when we allow our kids to opt out, we are amplifying their fears. We're saying to them, you're right. You can't handle it. You can't handle sports day, so you stay home. We should be giving our kids the opposite message. That yeah, it might be hard. Yeah, you might not like it, but you can do this. I know you can do this and I will be cheering you on. So when you do make your kids go to these events, this is an opportunity to tap into their power perspective. So that is the first pillar of our seven pillar framework, and that is the idea of helping your kids think in a way that works for them rather than against them. So you can say to your child, you're going to the swimming carnival. It's part of the school curriculum. You you don't get a choice about that. But you do get a choice over what sort of day you are going to have. You can choose to focus on all the things you're not going to like. And you can have a terrible day or you can choose to focus on the things that will happen on that day that you will like. A day out of the classroom, sitting with your friends, eating lollies, whatever it is, there will be some things that happen during sports day that your child likes and that your child can focus on that and they can choose to have a good day rather than a bad day. They always have the power to choose how they respond to events and that can change their whole perspective and their life.