Why Your Kid Doesn’t Want To Go To School Prize Distribution (And What To Do Next)
It’s 8:17 on a Tuesday, I’m scrubbing peanut butter off the kitchen counter after after-school snacks, and my 10-year-old Lila leans against the fridge twisting the hem of her soccer hoodie—cuff stained with my coffee from last weekend’s game—holding a cream-colored invite with a lumpy gold foil border. “I don’t really wanna go,” she mumbles, not meeting my eye.
I freeze for a second. I know what this is: the end-of-term prize distribution. She’s getting an award for her colored pencil comic about our rescue cat, the one she stayed up three weeks working on for the school art show. I helped her glue the binding on the portfolio and pack it into her backpack. I’ve already bought a new pack of colored pencils as a celebration gift.
My first instinct, the one my mom would have said out loud, is on the tip of my tongue: Don’t be silly, you earned this, it’s just an hour and a half, everyone has to go. But I stop. Because I can suddenly smell the old rubber and floor wax of my elementary school gym, remember the ache in my calves from sitting on bleachers for three hours in 8th grade, remember mishearing my name when they called for my writing award and sitting there red-faced while the entire school stared. I never told my mom how much I wanted to leave halfway through. I just smiled, took the certificate, and didn’t say a word.
So I lean against the counter next to Lila and ask, “What’s the worst part about it for you?”
She talks a mile a minute once I ask: The bleachers are hard and my butt hurts after 20 minutes. The microphone echoes so bad you can’t hear any of the names anyway. Last year my friend Mia tripped over the top step going up to the stage and the whole gym laughed. What if I do that? If you get a prize early on, you still have to sit through the other 70 awards and you can’t draw or read or anything, you just have to sit still and be quiet. The post-event cookies are stale and taste like lemon dish soap. I just don’t wanna.
I get it. We frame these events as big, exciting rewards for kids’ hard work, but most of the time they’re designed for adults and for the school’s yearbook photos, not for the kids who actually have to sit through them. Public recognition feels good for some kids, but for plenty of others, it’s just stress and boredom wrapped in a fancy certificate.
I asked her three more things, straight up: Do you not want the prize at all, or just don’t want to go get it in front of everyone? Would anything make going okay, or do you just want to skip the whole thing? If we figure out a middle ground, would that work for you?
She thought for a minute, picking at the gold foil on her invite. “I want the prize. I worked hard on it. I just don’t wanna sit through the whole thing. What if we go, I get my award, and then leave right after?”
That was easy enough. I sent a 2-line email to her teacher that night: Lila’s feeling really anxious about tomorrow’s prize assembly. Would it work if I checked her out right after her art award is called, so she doesn’t have to sit through the rest? No rush to get back to me, whatever works for you is fine for us.
Her teacher wrote back 10 minutes later: That’s totally fine. Half the 5th grade parents check their kids out early anyway. I’ll have her waiting by the side entrance when her turn comes.
On the day of, we pulled into the parking lot 15 minutes before 4th grade awards were scheduled. Lila waited with her teacher in the empty hallway by the gym instead of squeezing onto the bleachers with her class. When they called her name, she walked up, got her certificate, grinned quick for the photo, and met me by the door. We got mint chocolate chip cones on the way home, she drew a new page of her comic in the back seat while I picked up groceries, and we hung her certificate on the fridge that night right next to her soccer trophy.
This isn’t a story about fighting the system or how I’m a perfect parent who always gives my kid what she wants. It’s just a reminder that what feels like a big, special moment for us as parents or teachers doesn’t always feel that way for the kid. If you’re dealing with the same thing, you don’t have to force them to go just because it’s what you’re supposed to do. You don’t have to shame them for being uncomfortable or out of step with what everyone else is doing.
The small, concrete fixes work better than anything. Start by asking them what the actual problem is instead of assuming it’s just shyness or that they don’t value their work. A lot of the time it’s not the prize they hate—it’s the two hours of waiting, the public staring, the hard bleachers. Then ask the teacher for a small accommodation. Most teachers would rather adjust than deal with a kid having a quiet panic attack in the back of the gym, and common fixes are super easy: let your kid pick up the prize after the assembly, leave early, sit at the back with a fidget or book, or walk up with a friend if that helps. If they really want to skip the whole thing, that’s okay too. You can celebrate their win over pizza and ice cream at home, and that will mean more to them than any public handshake.
Most of the time, the issue isn’t that they don’t deserve recognition—it’s that they don’t want it in front of 300 strangers. Recognition can look different for every kid.
This year, the middle ground worked. Next year, if she doesn’t want to go at all, that’ll work too. We don’t have to have a big public ceremony to know she worked hard, and that’s enough.
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