Parents Behaving Badly

As a mother of three primary school aged children I'm constantly observing other parents around me, and noting differences between our styles of raising children. This week I had the wonderful opportunity to see parents in their true capacity at the school cross country, and it was both insightful and alarming.

I love my kids school. The teachers have always been fantastic, the children are mostly very well behaved and I've not had any personal troubles with the school community. However the school cross country on Monday was an absolute hot mess.

My daughter failed to run her final lap of her race, declaring she didn't feel like it and was given a tag saying she came 10th. My son finished, after doing what appeared to be a fantastic race, told me he'd accidentally run an extra lap and was given a 37th tag. Within minutes it became apparent some kids had been stopped one lap early and given 1st and 2nd tags while the rest were to complete the race in full. As a result, no one really knew who came what place, and in all age groups, confusion arose. I watched mother's tempers boil to the surface, I watched teachers become embarrassed and overwhelmed. I also saw children looking confused and upset.

Several parents (mums mostly) took it upon themselves to right the wrongs by taking tags off some children and passing them to others. They fixed the order of things and complained quite heatedly, directly to the teachers and the Principal responsible, in full view of the competing children.

There was swearing.

I felt disappointed in the lack of organisation. There was no tracking of laps, no bells, no one telling the kids how many laps they'd done or had to do. But mostly, I felt uncomfortable at my fellow parents for losing their shit. The parents of the more athletic kids were in the thick of it and I wondered if my kids were in the top 5, how I would feel.

One mother I saw, kept a smile on her face, talked to each boy in a race personally, ascertained what exactly they had done and rearranged them calmly, explaining to them what she was doing. She then advised the teacher what she had done.

I saw another mother snatch a 1st place tag of a young girl and hand it to her own daughter, then complain incessantly to the school PE teacher, in front of the children.

A 10 year old girl, who'd been coming first in her race, was pulled up one lap short, saying she'd finished. She was told moments later she had one more lap, so she turned and bolted for her final lap, coming in 2nd. Her mother, furious, approached the principal and told him the day was a fucking mess and what was he going to do about it.

My kids were ok. There were no tears and I told them I thought they ran well. I also told them that their confusion had been justified and it wasn't their fault. I'm not a helicopter parent but then, my kids didn't have a chance of going to zone.

The world needs disrupters, and problem solvers. We need children to grow up with the strength to step up to the system when it fails them. But watching these parents made me feel sad. When did primary school cross country become so competitive? I wonder if these same parents would have gotten so worked up if say, a spelling test had been conducted so chaotically.

In my opinion, primary school is the time where we set the ground rules, where our children learn how to relate to the world and make their way in it. It isn't the time for them to win and achieve their dreams, there's plenty of time for that later on. Life is chaos, and we do the best we can in this chaos.