When To Let Kids Quit

Enrichment classes, lessons, sports, Sunday school, and community events like Library Story Time can benefit our kids in many ways, but what do we do if our kids won’t cooperate or participate? What if they seem okay with it at first, but then later want to quit? The questions raised by a parent’s letter in this podcast are common ones: If our child is clearly distressed by an activity or outright rejecting it—even if they agreed to it to begin with—is it okay to let them stop? Will quitting set a negative precedent? What if we believe the activity is teaching important skills? Whose decision is it? Janet shares her perspective on the subject and offers guidelines for helping parents navigate this puzzling and often frustrating conundrum.

Transcript of “When to Let Kids Quit”

Hi, this is Janet Lansbury. Welcome to Unruffled.

Today I’m going to be talking about an issue that comes up for us as parents, I really don’t know any parent that’s ever avoided this completely, this worry as to whether we should let our child quit something or whether a class that we’ve started having them take or do, if we should make sure they stick with it or let them decide to stop. I have a parent’s specific question that she sent to me on this topic, and I have some guidelines to share, questions that we can ask ourselves to know whether we should let our child quit or not.

I’m going to make a bold statement right now: the earlier we start thinking in terms of these guidelines that I’m going to share and adopt this approach, this perspective, the less likely it’ll be that we’ll ever need to question our child or ourselves as parents around quitting, because we won’t end up finding ourselves in this situation. I have conviction around this because this is what I’ve noticed with my own children and the other parents that I’ve talked to that have older children now and what they’ve gone through. We’re seeing this whole idea differently and therefore it’s never a problem. Which is great, right? The less problems we have as parents, the less questions we have to ask ourselves and ask somebody else about, the better.

First, here’s the note that I received:

Dear Janet,

I’ve been reading your books and listening to your podcast since my only daughter was born, and I have learned so much from you. I have a situation I’m not sure how to navigate by myself right now, and I wondered if I could ask for some extra advice from you.

My daughter is two-and-a-half years old. She is strong-willed, sensitive, independent, adventurous, bold, and hilarious. Since she was born, I’ve wanted her to have a strong support network of chosen family and she’s been spending time with other adult figures and is usually completely fine when I leave her with such-and-such auntie to go to work or have a night off.

She’s always loved water and loves being in the pool with me. This spring, I thought it would be a good idea to enroll her in swim lessons at my local aquatots. She was excited and we had fun picking a new swimsuit and getting ready for her first class together. In this class, the parents do not join in the pool, but watch through a glass wall. When it was time for my daughter to join the other kids and go to the pool, she started crying and saying she didn’t want to go and clinging to me.

I was allowed to accompany her to the pool and she went in. I then told her I had to go and would wave at her from behind the glass, but she started crying and wanted to join me. The teacher told me not to worry, and I stepped outside and left her with the teacher and the other kids. I sat on the chair and waved at her and smiled and encouraged her, but she cried and refused to participate in the class for the whole half-hour. After the class was over, I wrapped her in a towel, hugged her, and rocked her in my arms as we cried, and then asked her how she felt. She said she felt scared, and I said, “Yes, you felt scared. That was really hard! But you did it.”

We went back the following week. I told her in advance we were going back to swim school and she was fine with it. And she was okay getting changed into her swimsuit and waiting for the class to begin, but as soon as she had to go in without me, exactly the same thing happened. She melted down and was in distress for the whole class.

I’m wondering how long I should keep trying and keep bringing her to class. On one hand, I want her to know that I believe in her and in her capacity to do things without me. When I was a child, on the second day of kindergarten, I cried. My father took me home and I didn’t go back to school until I was nine years old. (You read that right!) So I want to do things differently and communicate to her that I know she has the capacity to be in this swim class without me. I also don’t want to be too rigid and put her through distress for the sake of breaking a generational cycle. If she doesn’t go to swim class, it’s not the end of the world.

What do you see in this situation that I might not be seeing, and do you have any advice on how to handle the situation? Thank you.

So I am seeing some things that this parent might not be seeing and I do have some advice. It really comes down to these guidelines that I want to share.

How can we navigate whether or not to take our child out of a class like this? The first guideline is we ask ourselves: Is the commitment voluntary? And in this case, it is.

I know that’s controversial because there are a lot of people that I hear from who say swim lessons are not voluntary, that a child needs to do them because it’s a life or death thing. And I do understand that mentality, and I actually did a podcast about this called “Water Safety, Bodily Autonomy, and Emotional Health,” where I talked about the widely-held belief that it’s worth it for a child to be terrified in the water maybe, be really uncomfortable, have a distressing experience, all for the sake of the possibility that if we weren’t paying attention, that child might be able to gather themselves together and save themselves. To me, that is not a positive trade-off. Anyway, please check out that post. There’s a transcript of it on my website along with a link to the episode of Unruffled, and you can hear more about the research that I compiled and my perspective on the whole thing.

But that said, that doesn’t seem to be her motive. The way she describes this, she says her daughter always loved water and loves to be in the pool with her. She just thought it would be a good idea to enroll her in swim lessons. And her daughter was excited, they had fun picking out a new swimsuit and getting ready for their first class together. So it does seem like this was very much voluntary on the part of her child.

The thing is, though, children this young don’t have that perspective on what something will entail. What a certain class—whether it’s a dance class, taking lessons in sports, joining a team, gymnastics or art class, music class, any of these things—the sound of it is often quite different for them from the reality of it. They’re not able to understand, Okay, I love being in the water with my mother, but this class is going to be a whole different thing. That’s why I always recommend that we have our child actually observe a class before we decide to go get the swimsuit and commit them in some way, that we really let them know the reality. Because like I said, we have this different perspective where we know what something sort of is and what it might entail, but children do not have that.

So that’s where I don’t think this really was voluntary. The parent meant it to be, she meant so well, but it was a surprise to this little girl that she was going to have to leave her mother, be with a stranger, and do this uncomfortable thing. Going in the pool, getting water in your nose, it can feel scary. And to be with a total stranger and other children that you maybe don’t know, it is a big challenge and much different from being with your mother in the pool.

So this is the first guideline that we really consider: that their commitment is voluntary. And ideally that means that they choose it with some sense already of what it entails. That’s how they’re able to decide, Yes, I want to do this. And when children are able to choose with that understanding of what something is, they’re much less likely to want to quit. So, is the commitment voluntary? If it isn’t, then I would absolutely let a child quit.

The second guideline is very much related to the first: Is this extracurricular? By extracurricular, I mean is this something that our child should be able to choose whether or not they have enough energy to want to add this experience to their plate? Which may already include, I don’t know if it does for this little girl, but with a three-year-old or four-year-old, this may already include the challenge of preschool. And often we’re expecting them to do something when they’re in grade school. And this is extra, meaning that the time that they may choose to rest is now time in which they’re being asked to challenge themselves, and they may not have that kind of energy.

Preschool might seem like it’s just all fun and games to us, and ideally it should be just fun and games, but it’s still inherently very challenging for a young child because they’re navigating groups of peers, all the different personalities. They’re learning how to express their needs in a group at a time when they’re not as able to communicate as they will be when they’re older. They’re needing to trust different adults.

The way that I recommend allowing kids to direct their own play from the time they’re babies, because we know that that’s how they not only learn best, but use play as a therapeutic tool for whatever they’re going through. So in the way we allow that, that’s what we want extracurriculars to be for them: a choice. Because only they know what they need and how much they can handle stretching themselves and, of course, what they’re actually interested in pursuing in their free time.

I would consider anything that’s not school or childcare that we have to enroll our children in and we do have to make a commitment to, I would consider anything beyond that extracurricular. Any kind of class, even a playgroup that’s just play. Is this what my child wants and needs? I want to trust them on this. All classes, I believe, should be approached as extracurricular and voluntary.

The third point is to ask ourselves: Is this necessarily developmentally appropriate? And I’m often asked about situations like church or a library reading circle, where children aren’t cooperating and the parents are concerned. Any kind of class where kids are to follow instructions, none of that can be expected in these early years, I’d say up until at least four years old, but all children are different. Some children, they’re able to sit in church, and on some days some children will be able to sit in church and some days they won’t. But some children, they’re more able to do that. Or they really enjoy sitting down and listening in the library reading circle. But this can’t be an expectation that we have.

Something to keep in mind is that most of the people that teach these classes—whether it’s a swim class, the librarian doing the reading circle, or even a Sunday school teacher at church, the music class, team sports—generally these teachers of very young children, while they mean well, have no training in child development or minimal training in child development. And that is reflected in their methods and the way that they conduct their teaching. I think it’s easy for us to assume as parents, especially if our friends are doing it and their child is able to do this and there’s a class for it, so obviously that means it’s developmentally appropriate. That my child should be able to do fine in a swimming class right now, or in the music class or the art class, whatever it is. It’s deceiving, right?

But classes that offer adult instruction are not necessarily developmentally appropriate for young children. It’s enough for them to be learning our guidelines as parents in terms of discipline and the daily routine in our home and what’s expected of them there. To go beyond that and take their behavior into a very stimulating or challenging—or in the case of swimming, scary—class, it cannot be expected. So that’s the third guideline to keep in mind.

The fourth is to ask ourselves: Are there alternatives for giving our child the same experience? That’s the situation here with this swim class. This parent says her daughter enjoys being in the pool with her and could probably be ready for a class where the parents are with the children in the class and everybody’s learning together, or with a teacher who was able to do a more gradual, flexible child-led approach. There are teachers like that, who do understand child development enough to know that children need to feel a sense of choice and autonomy when they’re in a situation like being in the water. And when we give them that, they often are able to succeed. But this class doesn’t sound like it is structured that way or that the teachers understand that.

Oftentimes there is another way to provide that same experience for our child. I mean, with library reading time, I guess that’s simple: we allow our child to enjoy books with us without the pressure of, and the stimulation and distraction of, all those other children and this different place and this different person reading. So if that’s the experience we want to give our child, we can certainly give it to them at home.

Because one thing I just want to point out here too, this parent understands that she could leave her daughter with other people. So it’s not about I need to do everything with my mom. It’s about her feeling a sense of comfort in that situation and what she’s ready for. It’s wonderful that she can be with all those different people. I mean, that is adding so much richness to her life, so much learning goes on right there. How this person does things, the way they speak to me, the kind of ways that we play together. That’s a rich education in itself that she’s getting in the way that works for her. Where it’s not also, And now you have to do this challenging thing, like learn to swim, do gymnastics, be in church, sit in the library, whatever it is. Like this parent has done, we can often give children those same experiences in a way that they can handle, that they are ready for.

Here’s the last guideline and question to ask ourselves, and this is the most important one of all: Who is this for?

This parent did this wonderful thing where she tried to encourage her daughter and her daughter was crying, and she says, “After the class was over, I wrapped her in a towel, hugged her, and rocked her in my arms as we cried.” I don’t know if the parent was crying too, that would’ve made it harder for her child if she has to kind of worry about her parent there as well. But I don’t know, she might’ve meant that just the child was crying. “And then I asked her how she felt. She said she felt scared, and I said, ‘Yes, you felt scared. That was really hard! But you did it.'”

So that’s wonderful that this parent allowed her to have her feelings. The thing is—and this is such a subtle thing, I feel like I shouldn’t even bring it up because it seems nitpicky—but there’s a feeling that children get from us, especially sensitive, strong-willed children like this one. So independent, sensitive and strong-willed and adventurous and bold, what great qualities this child has! So now she has feelings, she’s scared, and her parent could see that she was having a hard time throughout the class. This is so much what I always want to do whenever a child’s upset and what we tend to do as parents. “You felt scared. That was really hard!” Beautiful, right there, if we could just leave it at that. But we want to make this point, right? “But you did it.” And what that does is so subtle, but the message children can get from that is, Okay yeah, you had this feeling and I accept your feeling, but here’s the ending I want you to hold onto. Which isn’t necessarily the ending that was real for her. But you did it and I want you to keep doing it. That’s what a child picks up from that, again, ever so subtly, a sensitive child like this. My parent was okay that I was upset, that’s beautiful, but they really want me to know that I did it anyway and that’s what they wanted. So maybe I am going to go try again next time.

That’s what I mean about, who is this for? When it’s very clear to us that this extracurricular, this voluntary activity is being totally led by the desires of my child, that they want to pursue this experience for themselves, when it’s pure like that, children are very unlikely to want to quit. But it’s got to not only start purely, but continue in that way.

One of my children, my son, was a club soccer player for years, like most of his years at school, from the time he was I think eight years old. And it was a huge commitment. After school, after his long day at school, he had to drive quite a distance to go to these practices at night, there’d be tournaments every weekend. It was a huge commitment. And the whole time my husband and I were clear though, we were clear that if he ever says, “I don’t really want to go to practice,” if he ever says, “I’m not sure about this,” if there’s any inkling that this is no longer for him, we’re letting him out. And we’re out, because we don’t want to be in that position of him doing something because he feels like we want him to. And eventually he did quit, but not until it was time to go to college and he wanted a college experience that wasn’t about soccer. And that was a bit of a gulp for us, I think, because wow, we’ve invested a lot in this. But that was a perfectly valid decision for him to make, and it was the right decision. And he knew because he was doing all of this for him. It was his life and his commitment and his adventure. So that’s what I mean about the sooner we can get on that path, the more likely it is we’re never going to have to be in this position of second-guessing our child, one more worry, one more decision that we have to make as parents.

So those are the guidelines. But here’s the clincher for this parent, and this is what’s behind all of this and I think where she’s having a hard time seeing clearly. She had this incredible experience as a child where this parent says, “When I was a child, on the second day of kindergarten, I cried. My father took me home and I didn’t go back to school until I was nine years old. (You read that right!) So I want to do things differently and communicate to her that I know she has the capacity to be in this swim class without me. I also don’t want to be too rigid and put her through distress for the sake of breaking a generational cycle. If she doesn’t go to swim class, it’s not the end of the world.”

I can see this parent kind of wrestling with herself there. And the thing is, what I hope is that this parent will be so kind to herself. That child in herself whose parents were so overwhelmed by her feelings or so angry about her feelings that maybe they wanted to punish her for them, but I’m not sure which or if it was both of those things. But they could not handle her having those feelings about her kindergarten, and so they made this extreme decision. That is an extreme thing to do, as this parent realizes. But maybe part of her isn’t quite seeing the perspective on that because as kids, we tend to frame everything that happens as somewhat normal because we trust our parents so much and the decisions they make. And therefore, when something like that happens, we can’t help but see that as our fault, that we were a mess and so they wouldn’t let us go to school. But that was a decision her parents made because of what they couldn’t handle.

I hope this parent is kind to herself around that, and knows that this little girl that she has is not her. Her daughter is a whole separate person that’s being raised differently. And this parent has already shown her that she’s not overwhelmed by her feelings or ruled by them, but willing to listen to and consider them. She’s already doing a whole different thing from what her parents did, she’s doing the ideal thing. But I think it’s important for her to know, to make peace with this idea that this extreme thing happened to her. She’s already not passing down a generational cycle, if that was a generational cycle. She’s doing something completely different as a parent, and she doesn’t need her daughter to prove that to her by being able to stay in a class that she’s not comfortable in. That is extracurricular, and should be voluntary, and is not necessarily developmentally appropriate. There are alternatives for giving her this same experience in a way that she can handle right now and succeed in. So who is this for? It’s not for this mother to prove something to the grandparents, that her child can do this. It’s not for this mother. It’s just for her daughter, which is who she wants it to be for.

Those are the things I’m seeing in this situation and my thoughts about them. I really hope they help this parent, and any parent, follow their instincts.

Thank you so much for listening. We can do this.