I’ll echo @CottonTales – Suck it up. Or don’t play. End of story.
PS You want to see real bullying? Try ice hockey, rugby, lacrosse, tennis, soccer and many others I could mention where physical and psychological competition is often neither pretty or fair.
I hated dodgeball so much as a kid that I would pretend I was sick and stay home on some PE days. I am a very resilient, successful Gen-Xer now in spite of my hatred of dodgeball…not a snowflake. It looks like I’m not the only kid who stayed/stays home to avoid dodgeball: https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2019/01/why-pe-is-terrible/581467/
I think I would have loved PE if yoga had been offered.
Did you miss the part where dodgeball is a part of gym class that isn’t optional?
I was bullied from 2nd thru 6th grades (including being physically struck by boys) and randomly in middle school. I don’t believe it helped me in any way. Fortunately, playing dodgeball or any other games wasn’t part of the bullying.
It is interesting to me that bystanders and henchmen of bullies have convenient amnesia about bullying.
In my experience, everyone HAD to play. It was part of gym class, not recess. There would have been kids holding balls and an empty brick wall if it were optional!
@hgtv - I hated gymanstics. I couldn’t do it. To this day I can’t do a cartwheel if my life depended on it. I hated it so much I walked into a poison oak bush and rubbed the leaves on my face, arms and legs to get out of having to do gymanstics.(It worked.)
Does that mean gymnastics should be banned? No, but it would be nice if gymnastics - or dodgeball - is something kids could choose based on their own preference and/or abilities.
@“Cardinal Fang” - I think forcing any sport on kids isn’t good. Except swimming, which is a necessary life skill.
@katliamom yes I think choice of PE activities would be the ideal. I know that in some of my neighboring school districts, high school students can take yoga, general fitness conditioning, weight training, dance, and even marching band to get PE credit. Our high school just offers the same kind of basic PE classes that I had as a kid.
Suck it up? Suck it up? Worse games?
When one is a child or teen and the MANDATORY PE game is dodgeball, where the one and only purpose is to throw a hard rubber ball at a classmate, there isn’t anything worse. Yeah, I was that kid. The class mean girl bully took a dislike to me and I was ostracized. Dodgeball was a nightmare come to life. Try having that ball hit you in the gut or face. Try to dodge, and the next up will get you for sure.
Oh, yeah. It really toughened me up.
Almost as much fun was being the last one chosen for a team for one of those “worse” games. I was uncoordinated and not athletic. They couldn’t hurt me if I stayed out of the way in those team sports, so the psychological injury of teasing and choosing me last was their tool.
Fortunately, being physically assaulted is looked down upon in adulthood.
I pity you. I pity your children.
Here’s how “toughening up” works, in practice.
You learn to hide your emotions. You learn to stay away from people, because they’ll unexpectedly hurt you. You learn not to trust anyone. You learn that nobody, no adult, no classmate, will intervene when people are hurting you: some people will join in, some will laugh, some will do nothing.
What is good about that? Why is that something that any child should learn? Why do you want anyone to learn that people will hurt them and nobody will do anything about it? Please explain the character-building aspect of this, because it eludes me.
My daughter lost a classmate to suicide last year.
He had been bullied for years. It got to the point where, as a high school senior, it was no longer tolerable.
So he threw himself in front of a train-- that was preferable to the bullying.
I guess he didn’t get the memo on how it was supposed to make him stronger.
One of the first lessons I remember my parents teaching me, before kindergarten, was to never throw anything at anyone because you could hurt them. Even at that age, this made perfect sense. Of course I didn’t want to hurt anyone.
I don’t think it’s a good idea to teach children to throw balls at someone. Really.
It bothers me that there are people on this thread explaining how they felt and what they experienced when required to play dodgeball when they were children, and there are other people on this thread who are dismissing and belittling those feelings and experiences.
My kids all went to schools where regular PE was mandatory. I was grateful, as are they now, that instructional PE was part of the curriculum. They learned the classic rules of many sports. Something they would not have learned on their own or from parents. Yes, they did also have some of those sports like soccer, baseball etc as extracurricular activities as well, but they also got exposure to sports they did not like or not offered.
When you are learning techniques and rules of a sport , the focus is not on just slamming other people which is the entire purpose of dodgeball
It’s amazing to me that so many people can read comments from children who are being ganged up on and intentionally, physically hurt with the encouragement of the adults who are supposed to protect them and the response is that they should suck it up. Yet when we talk and of teen depression and suicide people complain that we should do something. The children are speaking. Are you listening?
@austinmshauri ARE the children speaking? Or is it adults projecting on what some children might be saying? I’m willing to be corrected, btw.
We’re not projecting what some children might be saying. We’re telling you what we felt when we were children. Why are you discounting it? Do you not believe us when we tell you about our own experiences?
I specifically remember when I was in middle school our name for dodgeball, was called “killer ball”, it was played with a slightly deflated volley ball and kids would specifically aim for other kids heads. It was mandatory and probably not the best game to play in retrospect.
With that said, at D’s middle school, at lunch they had voluntary dodge ball club and D and her close friend who both had strong arms and good reflexes having played softball for years made it to the finals against the boys. I was proud of them and they really enjoyed the competition. The key here is it was “voluntary”.
It’s disgusting to hear people say “suck it up” or don’t be a slowflake. Just because things were done a certain way many years ago doesn’t mean we can’t evolve for the betterment of society.
If you “don’t play” you don’t pass gym. And you can’t graduate.
@“Cardinal Fang” I’m not discounting it. I shared my own experience with gymnastics. What I’m discounting is the demonization of a sport, rather than the policies which force it on kids who don’t want to participate in it.
In our schools you can select what activities you want to be involved in. Dodgeball is an option, but never mandatory. I for one don’t think you should force a kid to participate in a sport or activity he or she has zero interest in.