Daily Excerpt: Clean Your Plate! (Bayardelle) - Don't Be a Quitter
Excerpt from Clean Your Plate! (Bayardelle) -
Your kids want to try out ice skating. They’re jittery with excitement for their first class. They come home glowing and talk of little else for the next week. They ask for new ice skates for Christmas, they start saving up their allowance for new gloves to wear during their lessons, and you start Googling how to be the parent of an Olympic ice skater. As the weeks turn to months, the excitement slowly starts to wear off. After a few weeks, they no longer look forward to classes with as manic a level of excitement, and after a few months, they start outright complaining or asking not to go.
If
this is your first rodeo (i.e. the first sport or extracurricular your kid has
tried), it’s probably no big deal. You let them stop and pick another activity
because you don’t want to drag them to something they no longer enjoy.
So,
they decide try soccer. You see the same manic excitement and the same letter
to Santa requesting new cleats, but this time you’re cautious. However, there’s
nothing that wears down your resolve like the excitement of your progeny. After
a few weeks, like Charlie Brown with the football, you are somehow convinced
you have the next Mia Hamm on your hands. Unfortunately, this lasts for about
as long as the ice skating phase did, and pretty soon you’re dragging your kid
to practice by the hair.
Lather,
rinse, repeat.
It’s
heartbreaking to see a kid start something with the potential for insanely
awesomeness but then give up before having a chance to get good at it. This is
something we all see as parents.
Why
We Say It
Anyone
who has parented a child over the age at which they start doing
extracurriculars has noticed that kids seem to bounce from activity to activity
like a pinball in a box of meth. They hang in there just long enough for you to
cave and buy them all the gear, supplies, or paraphernalia needed to master
whatever that month’s activity is and then magically lose interest a few weeks
later.
After
a few years of this, your garage is full of baseball gloves, art supplies,
hockey sticks, tutus, and goodness knows what other artifacts, each dating back
to a 2-4-month period when your child wanted to be the next virtuoso at you-name-it.
Before
we go into why this happens, I want to reassure you that it’s completely
normal. You are not a bad parent. You did not raise a hedonistic sociopath with
ADHD. (Well, you might have, but you’d need to confirm it with a heck of a lot
more evidence than just sport hopping.)
That’s
just how kids are.
Research Says
(What They Hear)
There
are indeed instances in which kids need to be told to tough it out and finish
what they started. You aren’t supposed to let your kid bounce from thing to
thing with zero discipline or direction.
In
high school, my family got to be close with the family of one of my volleyball
teammates. and I kid you not, their family motto was “suck it up, princess.”[1] I don’t
mean as a joke; I mean the kind of family motto you find needlepointed onto
throw pillows. This statement was brought out any time someone began whining
because they didn’t get what they wanted. We’re not going to the movie you
wanted? Suck it up, princess. You have to study for your final instead of going
to that party? Suck it up, princess.
I
mention this because, while a host of lessons can be learned by granting your
children the autonomy to start and stop their activities at will, they will
need to tough it out through some situations when it’s easier to just quit.
Sick
of soccer in the middle of a season? Sorry, but you made a commitment to your
team. You don’t have to play next season, but for now...suck it up, princess.
Have
stage fright about that piano recital even though you’ve been practicing all
month? You’ll have to perform in public (speeches, business meetings,
presentations, etc.) your whole life. It’s a learning experience. Suck it up,
princess.
Only
you as a parent will be able to judge whether response to a circumstance reflects
“quitting” (in a bad way) or simply choosing not to do something anymore. Situations
are very rarely clear-cut, but the section below should help you decipher which
times you should let your kids decide their own fates and which merit a swift
and firmly stated “suck it up, princess.”
So,
to get at what kids really hear, let’s go over some reasons kids do bounce from
thing to thing and, more important, why it’s important for them to do so.
Reason #1: Exploring, Not Quitting
It’s
important for kids to try new things. (Duh.)
There
is an astounding number of different activities your kid could excel in, from
drama to volleyball, swimming to debate, pottery, Spanish classes, photography,
robotics. Today’s era of parenting superkids has led to a truly frightening
array of activities your child could do. Sign language for toddlers? Classes
all over the place? Coding for elementary schoolers? Take your pick. Martian
cooking for former fetuses? Probably exists somewhere. I wouldn’t be surprised.
This
variety is good and bad. It’s good because kids need to try a bunch of things
to find “the one” thing that they actually want to focus on for the long term. Very
few kids find the activity they’ll still be loving when they’re adults on their
first day of preschool. Many don’t find it until much later. Julia Child
learned to cook in her late 30’s. Stan Lee drew his first superhero at age 43. Laura
Ingalls Wilder wrote Little House on the Prairie in her 60’s.
Yes,
some people know what they want to do with their life before they learn to
read, but a far larger portion of successful people took their time in finding
their true passion.
The
reason kids bounce from thing to thing is they need to experience a huge
variety of activities to pinpoint exactly what they like to do. The odds of you
as a parent sticking them in an activity when they’re still in diapers and
having it be the exact perfect fit for them long-term are astronomically low.
It’s
more likely that you’ll put them in ballet, only to realize that they really
spend most of the time hanging from the bar rather than dancing. You then
switch them to gymnastics (so they can hang off bars properly), where they
discover that they’re way faster at running down the vault runway than all the
other kids. You put them in track, but they can’t get excited about running in
a straight line for hours on end. Then, one day they go to their friend’s house
and play around with a soccer ball, so you decide to give that a go. They like
it for a few years but eventually lose interest. Then, one day they randomly
pick up a lacrosse stick, and the stars align. There’s a burst of golden light
(think Ollivander’s when Harry finally picks out the correct wand), and angelic
song fills Dick’s Sporting Goods. They find a sport that merges their super
speed with the strategy they learned in soccer, and they never look back.
Just
like you aren’t still working at your high school summer job, it takes kids a
while to figure out what they like, what they’re good at, and what they can be
passionate about in the long term.
If
we penalize kids for “quitting” or, worse, label them as a “quitter” every time
they switch activities, they run the risk of staying in something just for
continuity’s sake and missing out on finding their true passion.
Reason #2: Skill Development
The
next reason kids can, will, and should bounce from activity to activity like a
raccoon who got into a garbage can of Halloween candy is that they need to
build a wide variety of skills.
First,
and this may be a hard pill for some of you to swallow, very few of our kids
are going to grow up to be professional athletes or Olympians.
*pauses
while you throw a pair of children’s hockey skates across the room in a fit of
parental rage*
Remember
that kid we talked about before? The one who bounced from ballet to gymnastics
to track to soccer only to end up playing lacrosse? Yeah, he’s going to end up
being a CPA or a contract lawyer, lacrosse or no lacrosse.[2]
Kids
don’t usually play sports (or do drama or take art classes) because that’s
going to be their ultimate profession. I, for example, played volleyball for 15
years. Other than the fact that I get irrationally,
golden-retriever-puppy-with-a-new-ball levels of happy when volleyball comes on
TV, the fact that I spent four hours a day for a majority of my
formative years having balls hit at my face does not have any direct
impact on my adult life.
However,
it does have an immeasurable amount of indirect impact on my adult life.
Having to keep running during the fifth round of wind sprints when all I wanted
to do was lie down (and possibly puke) taught me a kind of persistence I use
when it’s 11 p.m. and I still have work to do even though I’d give anything for
a few hours of sleep before I have to get up and feed the baby. Working toward
a common goal with less-than-pleasant teammates gave me important skills for my
first experience with less-than-pleasant coworkers (and many other bunches of
unpleasant humans I’ve encountered since). Creating a long-term plan to improve
my jump serve by a certain date (e.g. club tryouts, state finals, etc.) gave me
hands-on experience with goal setting, planning, and self-improvement
strategies that I use every day for, well, pretty much everything I do.
Just
because our kids aren’t going to be on the world cup soccer team doesn’t mean
that they won’t use the teamwork, discipline, and drive they learn playing on
their local AYSO team. This means that, since odds are they aren’t going to be
on the Olympic podium, the purpose of all these extracurriculars is to help
them learn as many valuable skills as we can cram into their tiny heads. This
critical skill set doesn’t necessarily include throwing the perfect curve ball,
but it does include other things they’ll learn through their extracurriculars. An
emphasis on acquisition of life skills over subject-specific skills is why it’s
not necessarily a bad thing if your kid hops from thing to thing, especially in
the younger years.
Reason #3: Learning to Balance Their
Time
One
of the biggest lessons that extracurriculars teach our kids is how to balance
their time.
During
the school day, kids are ushered from one mandatory activity to another. The
teacher tells them where to go, what to do, and how long they have for each
activity, ensuring they always have enough time to finish each one.
If
you found yourself salivating at that description, congratulations, you’re
officially a parent. We have a million places to be at any given moment (and we
are the ones who have to schedule it all). We have more tasks on our to do list
than any five humans could ever accomplish in a 24-hour period (and we have to
pick which ones are most important and face the fire if we choose wrong). And
we will never actually have time to complete anything before our tiny gremlins
start demanding we play with them, help them with homework, or explain why Fifi,
the household bulldog, can’t fly.
This
is why extracurriculars are important. This is the first taste your kids will
get of choosing their own activities in a scenario where you can’t do all the
things. They have to pick which activities to do, which to neglect, and come to
terms with the principle that time spent on one activity isn’t being devoted to
other ventures. They’ll learn that they can spend a little time on a lot of
things and become mediocre to good at all of them, but that if they focus a lot
of time on one thing they can become really good at it.
Yes,
it’s important to teach kids to stick with things, but it’s also important for
them to learn to weigh the value of different ventures and pick the one that’s
most valuable in the long run, even if it means stopping something else. It
also means that your kids have to learn not to commit to more things than they
can do well, a skill we all wish we had a little more of from time to time.
Reason #4: Good Quitting as an Adult
This
last reason brings up one last, very important skill: learning to say no to
things.
Whether
it’s a promising opportunity to take on more at work, a fun thing you
desperately want to do, accomplishing more on your to do list to the detriment
of a good night’s sleep, or simply prioritizing various claims on your time,
saying no is one of the hardest things an adult has to do. The art of
gracefully declining an opportunity or politely saying you don’t have time to
do something is incredibly challenging.
It
also happens to be an insanely important skill for any adult who doesn’t want
to live an unimaginably frazzled, and overbooked existence. Learning
how not to book yourself for more than you can do (and do well), how to
recognize when you’re in over your head, and how to figure out which things to
cut out when you have to scale down are essential life skills that need to be
taught in childhood.
What
To Say Instead
There
are some occasions where instead of telling your kids not to be a quitter, you
should help guide them through the process of properly deciding to change life
course. They’ll have to do this numerous times in their lives, from changing
jobs to ending relationships, so they need to know how to do it well.
When to Let Your Kid Quit
Here
are some of the situational characteristics that usually indicate it’s okay for
your child to stop something they’re doing:
●
It’s
something they just began doing and found they don’t like.
●
It’s
an activity they have done for a long time (years, not months) and their
interest has been slowly declining.
●
They
have other activities they are doing for the long term.
●
Their
primary motivation for continuing the activity would be not displeasing you.
●
They
tried an activity because it’s your favorite thing, but they don’t enjoy it.
●
The
desire to quit comes from being overscheduled or too busy.
●
They
have an alternative activity they want to substitute for the one they’re
quitting.
●
It’s
an “optional” activity rather than something school-related.
●
They
can clearly enunciate why they want to stop.
Basically,
let’s say your kid just wanted to try out a passing interest in violin lessons,
and, surprise, it turns out didn’t like them. It doesn’t matter if you played
violin all through your childhood and have an undying passion for it. Your kids
shouldn’t be forced to play their way to a university scholarship. Make them
stick it out through their first recital (providing training in grit and
delayed gratification), but then let them stop playing and try something else.
Similarly,
if your kids have been doing gymnastics since they did Mommy and me as a
toddler, they used to love it but they have been steadily losing interest over
the course of six months, and they come to you asking to quit gymnastics so
they can try out for the school swimming team, help them do it properly. Have
them write thank you notes to the coaches who have been a part of their lives
since before they could talk, make sure they quit at a time that doesn’t let
their team down, and then get them a new bag for their swim gear as a
celebration of their new direction.
When Not to Let Your Kid Quit
On
the other hand, there are many circumstances that merit a “suck it up, princess.”
Kids do need to be forced to stick with things sometimes or they will turn into
flighty, undependable, messes as grownups.
Here
are the indicators that this is more of a “suck it up, princess” type of
moment:
●
The
primary motivation for quitting is that the activity just started to get
challenging.
●
They
want to quit immediately following a big loss or other let-down.
●
They
have developed a pattern of serial quitting, where they do activities for a few
weeks and then get tired of them.
●
They
don’t have any interest in doing any other activities as a replacement.
●
They
have plenty of time in their schedule and are not time stressed due to the
activity.
●
They
want to quit due to social reasons rather than for a reason related to the
activity itself.
●
They
made a commitment to other people, such as a team, group, partner, or someone
else who will be negatively impacted by their quitting.
●
They
don’t have any activities they have pursued long-term (years, not months).
●
They
recently asked for (and got) expensive supplies or equipment for the activity.[3]
●
They
can’t explain in words why they want to quit.
Overall,
no one but you can know when your kid needs to tough it out and when they
should be allowed to choose not to do an activity. I only encourage you to
think it through rationally. Try to disentangle your personal feelings about
the activity itself and look at what your kid is gaining from the experience. (Remember,
very few kids grow up to be professional whatevers. It’s all about the
learning.) Weigh the benefit they get from the activity and their motivations
for stopping.
When
all else fails, listen to your kid. If they can explain their reasoning and it
sounds like they’ve thought it through without any major logical gaps,
congratulate them on a choice well-made and help them transition to whatever
comes next.
Cheat
Sheet
●
Teach
kids the difference between “quitting” and “choosing not to do something
anymore”. Usually quitting is based on a hedonistic desire to take the easy way
out of something that just got hard or unpleasant. On the other hand, your kids
have to be able to have a way to stop an activity which they genuinely tried
but no longer enjoy.
●
Sometimes,
kids need to suck it up, princess. There will be times when your kid isn’t
allowed to quit or isn’t allowed to quit just yet. Make sure they get good at
following through on their commitments, taking no for an answer when it’s
necessary and knowing why they have to master the art of finishing what you
start.
●
Teach
kids how to make decisions about how to spend their time. There’s no way your
kids will have the time, energy, or finances to pursue every activity that strikes
their fancy. Teach them how to prioritize, analyze what matters and will
benefit them in the long term, and how to organize their schedule to get the
most benefit out of their activities.
Teach kids how to say no. Saying no to a potential activity is hard. Many (if not most) adults still have a hard time with this one. Start showing your kids that they can’t do literally everything, and help them learn to politely decline opportunities they don’t have the bandwidth to do well.
[1]
Just a quick disclaimer, this was not said in a derogatory way in terms of
gender. It was said equally to my female friend, her 6’2” brother, and her
father. The only population that should feel remotely insulted is helpless
Disney princesses.
[2] Yeah, you thought it was a girl because I mentioned
ballet? Ha! Gotcha. #genderstereotypes #boyscandoballettoo
[3]
This one is especially important if they have a track record of starting
something, demanding all the “stuff” for it, then quitting shortly after. You
aren’t made of money. and it is doing yourself and your kids a great
disservice to let them think you are.
For more posts about Liz and her books, click HERE.
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