Should our children be taught to be competitive?

........and if so who should this role fall to?

Should our children be taught that competition is only ok in certain circumstances and subjects?

This Tuesday was Ben's 'sports day', one of only 3 days of the year where I take time off work to go to school and see him achieve something or perform to the best of his ability.  But this year sports day was very different, we were told that the head teacher didn't believe children should be competitive any more.  I almost thought I had misheard but no, sports day was going to be a team event rather then individual competition.    They had all survived their Reception sports day unscathed (Y1 was cancelled) but now they are in Y2 we are being told that children cannot cope with disappointment until Y6 so sports day will be changing.

This year the children were split into teams of 9/10 children and would be scoring points towards a team total at individual activity stations, when the time was up someone else went to that activity and you moved on.  Let me share how sporty some of these were with you....

Throw a bean bag in a hoop.  Depending on which hoop it lands in you get 1, 2 or 3 points for your team.

Tuneful Tuesday - The Paintbox Song

Which songs do you remember from your school days? for me it was "When the Knight Won his Spurs", "Autumn Days and this one.... "The Paintbox Song".

.  ...do you remember going really quiet when the celery was asleep?
  ..... did you get in trouble for saying "yeahh" at the end?

All together now.........................

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"Sad Letters" from the teacher .... I am SOO in the #badmumsclub

Last term Ben came home from school with a 'sad letter' from his teacher.  He wasn't alone, a few of his friends also came out of school brandishing the white paper of dread.  Turns out a group of them had been fighting in the playground, teasing another child and then running away.  I was cross.  This was NOT how I'd brought my son up.    Not only was he, rightly, told off for his behaviour by the teacher he has been sent to the Headteachers office with his friends to explain their actions.
   Let me put this in context if you are new to my blog.  Ben is 5 YEARS old. He is a 'normal' kid, that is I cannot hide behind autism or ADHD or another 'problem' for the way he behaves.  yes he lashes out, he's 5, trying to control his temper is really difficult but that's not an excuse.  At the time of this first letter he had been in his reception class for around 4 months.
  Of course we didn't let it go, he was made to apologise to his teacher the following morning when he went into school and had his PS3/ DS time taken away for a week.