Haha! @“Cardinal Fang” , you’re right! I don’t. Perhaps I should!
@Nrdsb4 , pretty jealous of your dating life. ?
Yep, @dietz199 , me too! Luckily I wasn’t dead last, so I managed to somehow make it through the early school years. You will probably sympathize with me being one of the last to be called in Red Rover, lol!
@Nrdsb4, swimming has bullying tactics, not in races but in workouts. Pulling on legs, blocking or intentional hitting is the norm in competitive swimming, in workouts not meets
And pm me who you dated!
DS is a high level cycle racer. That sport is known to have individuals who will intentionally knock over a competitor. He is 24 and there are still bullies. There will always be bullies.
Maybe all sports/games need to be banned. Someone will always be better than someone else. Someones’ feelings are guaranteed to get hurt. One team will LOSE. And that runs the risk of irreparable damage to young psyches.
And yet. … our favorite national sport is one violent gladiator game sanitized for commercial television. We love, admire and idolize highly paid bullies.
@Nrdsb4 You didn’t date Jerry Heidenreich, did you?
School children are not forced to play ice hockey or tackle football in order to pass PE class.
For me, the issue has to do with the basic human right to bodily autonomy. I don’t believe that anyone should be required to let other people touch or hit their bodies, especially in ways that can cause pain and injury, without their consent. No child should be forced to put themselves in a position where other children are allowed to hit or physically hurt them. If a kid wants to join the football or hockey team, that is their choice to participate. If schools want to treat dodgeball as a voluntary sport, outside of PE, fine: players should be closely supervised, anyone purposely hurting another child should be removed, and no child who doesn’t want to participate should ever be coerced into doing so.
I don’t think there is ANY context in which it’s a good idea to teach children that other people have the right to physically hit or hurt them — or that hitting other children is FUN and it’s OK to mock and laugh at kids who cry or complain when they’ve been attacked and hurt.
We should be teaching children the exact opposite: that no one has the right to touch or hit them without their consent, that they have every right to object if it happens, and that their complaints will be listened to and taken seriously. THAT is how you make kids more resilient to abuse and predatory behavior, not by conditioning them to accept it.
@katliamom. Was the purpose of gymnastics to have other people throw things at you? No? Then do you see why your analogy is not a good one?
Well said.
The purpose of fencing is for someone to poke you with a sword! Is that bullying? No- it is not required. I remember having to do a flip or something over a buck or horse to pass PE and I was petrified. Guess what? I survived?
Dodgeball is a GAME. The purpose is to have fun and maybe get some exercise. I honestly feel sorry for a lot of you folks. Life is just not all that bad. I’m wondering if dodgeball might be a fun team building exercise for my staff? 
Or maybe not- marketing did a kickball activity and 2 people wound up straining things and had to go to the doctor.
@MomofWildChild he was quite a bit before my time. I had to look him up.
I think that one of the points repeatedly made on this thread is that it is not fun for some kids. It is an activity that they experience as humiliating, frightening, and/or physically painful. Telling them that their experience is “not that bad” doesn’t seem helpful.
Well @Marian Dictating that a game can or should not be played because some people had a bad experience isn’t particularly helpful either. I’m sorry people had a bad experience with dodgeball. I had a bad experience with my childhood dentist and with a number of other things. That is part of my life story. It’s fine to not like dodgeball or to have bad memories about childhood games- but the article and many of these comments here are definitely in snowflake and “my way or the highway” territory. We don’t live in a world where all we get to do is skip around and blow bubbles by ourselves. There are bad kids and bullies. That’s why there are adults and supervision.
I’m in the camp that believes if the games are properly officiated, bullying won’t be a problem. Oftentimes players who get hit in the face actually duck into the ball, and by official rules they are out. If they get hit in the face standing, they are not out. The balls played with today are soft and don’t cause injury. The best players throw fast and hard, not to be bullies, but because those throws are the most difficult to dodge. The best players also throw at the feet, not at the face or torso, because low balls are less likely to be caught.
There’s a lot of hate here for dodgeball, but it’s one of the most popular intramural sports on many campuses. In my state it is also a very popular park and rec league offering for adults.
I think a lot of dodgeball haters also just hate PE in general. The same kids probably don’t like flag football, basketball, scooter races, or team handball. Bullying is the problem, not the games.
One of my kids swam in high school, and while it’s not a contact sport, there’s plenty of opportunity to roughhouse. I saw kids throwing each other in the pool, wrestling in the water, and dunking each other. Water Polo was their reward and it was rough. In competition, I saw swimmers spitting in the lanes of other swimmers. There’s a lot of stuff that goes on no matter the sport.
Dodgeball isn’t that bad. There are worse things in life. Kids need to be taught coping skills, perseverance, resiliency, humility, bravery, etc.
Maybe the student diffuses the situation with humor, maybe the student goes to the midline (shorten the distance of throw), covers up and says “hit me with your best shot,” then sits on the bench. I can probably think of a few more, if I wanted to spend time on the subject.
The whole “well I survived bullying therefore bullying is no big deal” trope is ridiculous. I grew up in a dysfunctional, abusive home; the fact that I managed to become a successful and reasonably well-adjusted adult does not in ANY way mean the abuse was no big deal, nor does it imply that since I was able to overcome it then everyone else who was bullied or abused should be able to overcome it too.
You can look at the fact that the world is full of ■■■■■■■■ and bullying is rampant in every aspect of life and just shrug and say well, it’s good for children to be subjected to bullying and abuse, so they can get used to it. Or you can think we need to train children not to accept it, we need to train adults to defend them, and we need to train the bystanders to support victims in standing up to the bullies instead of standing by laughing in relief that someone else was the target.
Sexual assault is rampant, too — should we tell little girls that it’s no big deal, they might as well get used to it, because that’s what adult life is like? Saying that people should just “teach their kids not to be bullied” is no different from saying that people should just “teach their daughters not to be raped or assaulted.” It’s total BS that only serves to empower abusers by putting the onus on the victim to avoid being victimized.
In our middle school you run the mile at the start of the school year and at the end. Our middle really takes PE seriously. Almost every kid improves his time over the course of the year. It really is impressive. They also play bombardment, which is basically dodgeball. Obviously, some kids just hate PE, but bullying is simply not tolerated. The PE teachers are excellent and do their job. It isn’t the sport that is the issue.
None of you who support dodgeball have explained how parents should teach their children not to be bullied. I’d like to know this useful information.
I don’t know the answer to that. I don’t think dodgeball is the problem, though.
Oh come on. Play or don’t play. You want to stop the most destructive and common bullying mechanism?
Take away the darn cellphone and social media.
Don’t worry about dodgeball take your kids phones away. I’ll bet, if you’re honest, that’s not going to happen of course.
I don’t care about dodgeball.
Honestly Play or don’t play it’s totally ok!
Tell the school your child is excused. Call the principal if they make you or give them a bad grade. It won’t happen.
Bullying is bad. It’s hard to stop. But the painting of a picture where scores of mean kids are pelting the weak or mentally challenged kids with a ball that hurts in anyway these days is a myth.
The real problem is the cellphone and social sites.
Come on, read the thread, @privatebanker. We’ve repeatedly explained that in our schools, dodgeball was not optional.
Cardinal Fang. You’re telling me in this day and age, a school administrator faced with a parent articulating your position on the game, demanding opt out or access to a therapist to write a note for your child that your child must not participate would be denied by the school? That’s not reasonable.
It would take one call from my lawyer or wife and they wouldn’t be playing anything.