My nine year old daughter is once again dreading sports day at the beginning of July and has been in floods of tears over it. She has diplegia and some deformity in her feet which gives her an awkward walking gate, poor balance and a lack of speed and stamina when walking or running. She attends a main stream school and is the only child there with a disability. Since all the events at sports day rely on her running, it is a complete nightmare for her. She is usually given a head start which at least makes it possible for her to compete, but she does not like special treatment which sets her aside from the other children and if she happens to do well the other children say she cheated or it's only because she had a head start. If she started on the line with the others she would be left a long way behind, which she would also hate! If she doesn't take part at all then she is once again singled out. Has anyone experienced this or have any advice?

can the school include other games such as throwing bean bags, basket and hoops, infact i would insist that they come up with ideas quickly so that your dd can have the oppertunity to enjoy sports day. In my dd school we have children with all different dissabilities and the children held a meeting to deciced on events for everyone to enjoy as well as the old favorites. This worked very well, there is nothing worse than being given a head start and still not winning. The school must rethink there sports day.

i agree with julie in that if they acnowledge her disability enough to allow her to have a head start they should be able to do some sports games that dont require running, we used to have all sorts of games due to fact there were all different ages (i am going back nearly 30 yrs hehe) at matt's school they would have to throw bean bags into a hula hoop from a certain distance unless they were more physically impaired in which case they "stood" over it, so guess they treated them children differently and that was a special school.
i am sure we can come up with some suggestions (clean ones only please ) that you can take back to the school that they can impliment into the programme as i am sure if its anything like my junior school the same ppl won the running every year (sorry ) so there is probably plenty of children that are not good at running but would like to have a chance of other games too

what about shotputt???

I have always pulled my boys out of sports day. We have always had a dentist/hosp/doctors appointment and we spend the day together doing something nice eg cinema/swimming etc. I cannot make them run like everyone else and why should they be made to feel bad. I have pulled my youngest out of games altogether anyway and the lovely Children in his school are great about it.

My son's just had his school sports day today and he did things like throwing foam javelins, throwing bean bags into hula hoops, balancing bean bags on heads, quite a few things that don't involve running, maybe it's worthwhile mentioning this kind of thing to school and see if they can incoporate them into the sports day so it's not all about running. x