Welcome back to Minor Dilemmas, where a member of Defector's Parents Council will answer your questions on surviving family life. Have a question? Email us at minordilemmas@defector.com.
This week, Dave answers a question about how to know when to let your kid quit an activity.
Ike:
Hi Minor Dilemmas,
I'm a dad of three (12, 10, and 5) and one of the hardest things we deal with right now is knowing when to let our kids quit something (an extracurricular, a team sport, a play, etc) versus pushing them to follow through. I grew up trying out different team sports and I quickly learned they were not for me. My parents were ok with that, but they had a rule that I couldn't quit mid-season since I was part of a team. So, that's been the rule we've tried to follow. too. But we're learning the big difference is that when I was a kid, I kept my mouth shut out of fear for my parents and just toughed through till the end of the season.
Our kids, however, seem to neither fear or respect us and will throw everything at us to avoid going to their practice or games: tears, fits, crocs, you name it.
Sometimes we lose our cool, sometimes we can be the grownups. But it's torture sometimes to get our kids to stick with something long enough to give it a fair shake.
Especially if we're confident they would benefit personally from following through. But the fights to get out the door sour the whole experience for everyone involved, so we also don't want to be unnecessarily stubborn and potentially drive some kind of wedge between us and the kids. Anyway, any wisdom you can share would be appreciated. Thanks!
First, I’m sorry your household’s become a quitting quagmire. But your search for wisdom has brought you to the right place! Asking Defector about quitting is like asking Krispy Kreme about glazing. We know quitting. This place was founded by and for quitters. Hell, our coolest and best-selling T-shirt says “Quit Your Job!” Yeah, we’re quit pro bros! OK, OK. I should have quit typing before typing that.
Your dilemma with your kids hits me right where I live. Been there! I support your no-quit edict wholeheartedly, rough as that makes things sometimes. Not only because I think it’s righteous and valuable, but also because we had the same rule with our kids!
OK, here’s my deal: I have two boys, now 20 and 16. Like you, we never forced them to take up any specific pastime as lads. (Or there woulda been guitar lessons, dangit!) But if they signed up for something, we made them finish what they signed up for. This seemed to impart basic life lessons that would transcend any kiddie ballfield: a deal’s a deal, keep your word, etc. And, from living as long as I had by the time I had kids, I’d learned for myself that completing tasks, even new and uneasy ones—like, say, my first attempt at typing up parental advice—is not only gratifying, but also easier once you accept that quitting ain’t an option.
At the risk of exposing myself as a cliche, a true story: Lots of times through the years, when things don’t come easy, I’ve thought back to high school football. The summer practices were way harder than I ever would have guessed. On the first day, everybody was forced to run eight 220-yard sprints back to back with a minute break, which gave you just enough time to walk across the field and back to the starting line. We’re talking in August in the D.C. area. My marginally athletic husky ass never did anything physically harder before or since. I threw up breakfast and everything else in my system. But I didn’t quit. The puke stains on my shoes were my badges of courage. The taste of bile is still with me, no fooling. But so is the sense of accomplishment. And to this day, when I’m stuck on something that needs finishing, I swear I think back to those first damn sprints. And I get back to doing what’s gotta get done.
In the interest of doing what’s good and right by our children and, gasp, preparing them for life without us, my wife and I stressed the importance of not giving up. We didn’t go into this parenting thing knowing much about what we were supposed to do, and hadn’t read the latest Gladwell tome for guidance, so we weren’t leading a household of rules. The only edicts we actually voiced to the boys when they were little were basic as heck. While reminiscing with my wife to prepare for this column, these, and only these, rules came to mind: Say please and thank you; hang up your wet towels after showers; no TV or games if you stay home sick from school; and, yes, no quitting. (Facing our rulelessness was more humorous than surprising!)
But rules are easier promulgated than enforced. As you’ve seen three times over, Ike, kids wanna give up sometimes. Clamoring over quitting popped up on the regular through the early years. The worst episode, by miles on my end, was when my eldest was nine years old and went away to a sleepaway basketball camp in suburban Virginia. (We live in Washington, D.C.) He wanted to sign up because a couple friends at school were going. Dropoff went swimmingly, but he’d never been apart from both of us before, so we were nervous about how that first night would go.
It went bad. My phone rang at about 10 o’clock. My boy was on the other end. He’d gotten out of bed and gone to a counselor’s room to ask to borrow a phone. He sounded sadder than I’d ever heard him. He told me through sobs that he couldn’t sleep and missed me and wanted to come home. I told him I missed him, too, and that he had to stay. His friends were there, I said, and it wouldn’t be fair to just leave them behind. He cried harder and begged more. My stomach was turning. I could have driven across the river and got him, and we both would have had a better night. But I didn’t. I told him I loved him and that he’d get through it. I told myself I was doing the right thing, sticking by a righteous rule. I felt horrible.
As life’s challenges go, this sleepaway camp debacle isn’t gonna make anybody’s Mount Rushmore. But feeling so bad about a decision was new to me. And the awful feeling that hearing my precious boy hurting gave me that night survived the years as much as the taste of bile from high school football.
Luckily, we never encountered any toxic sports programs where unhealthy stuff was going on that could make quitting the right choice. I was in awe of almost every youth coach that worked with my kids. That made staying the course when the quitting fits came far less complicated. But they came! And, much as I believe in the benefits of keeping going when the going gets rough, mid-meltdown is no time for dad to reminisce about how high school football turned out to be real boss or lecture about character-building. But once the temperature cools, I would suggest trying to get your kids to think about friends and coaches who were giving their time to show up to practice and games, and rightly expected them to do the same. No spiel worked every time, but that was one of my go-tos. Then I’d get into how they would be letting themselves down, too. I’d also bring up how things tended to turn out good when they stuck with it. Thankfully, I didn’t have to fudge this at all.
Fast forward to that same son that called from sleepaway camp going off to college. Back to being a cliche: For days and maybe weeks after moving my kid in the dorms, I was exactly that guy in the viral Eric Church commencement speech, sitting alone and crying, being absolutely crushed by the finality of it all. Memories of every time I let my boy down came flooding back. Regrets, I had a few—including leaving him alone and hurting at that first sleepaway camp. If somebody gave me the chance to do it all over again, I told myself then and there, I’d be across the river by midnight hugging my nine-year-old sweetie and bringing him home. Maybe that call will come from college.
But this time around, separation didn’t lead to teary calls about missing us. He’s in his second year away now, and he didn’t come home once this year. Now I’m the one making calls pleading loneliness. It stinks! But I’m told this is as it should be, and some part of me knows that’s right.
He did call mid-semester and said he was having a rough time with a specific class. He was considering giving up, and we talked as the deadline for withdrawing approached. We didn’t verbalize the no-quitting rule from childhood. We did remind him that dropping the class would cause problems. It would cost thousands of dollars. He still would have to take the same class over, either over the summer or in addition to his normal course load. It would cost thousands of dollars. It would make quitting the next time things got rough easier. Plus, it would cost thousands of dollars.
He stuck it out. He put in the work that we knew he could. The grades for the term showed up at the house recently. He did good in everything, nearly dropped class and all. He didn’t say as much, but he was in the room when I got the transcript, and I could tell how happy this made him. I shit you not, I thought back to the sleepaway camp and told myself maybe this was the equal and opposite reaction to all that sadness. I got weepy all over again. Good weepy.
I told him I was going to tell the old camp story in print, and asked him if he ever thinks about it.
"Yeah, yeah," he said. "I think it ruined our relationship. Things never were the same after that. Just kidding. I don't really remember it much." We laughed.
He’s still got two more years of school at least before entering the work force. Different rules will apply when he gets there. If he ever calls to say he wants to quit a job, I might have to recuse myself.
