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Finding Ways to Discourage A Child from Quitting

Finding Ways to Discourage A Child from Quitting – It becomes a struggle between parents and kids on whether or not the child should be allowed to quit. So, as a parent, what do you do?

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Finding Ways to Discourage A Child from Quitting

Force your child to stick with it, or let them quit? When is it ok to push the issue to demonstrate a life lesson, and when is it going too far? What is the best way for parents finding ways to discourage a child from quitting?

I’ve had two instances recently where this situation arose, and with some creative parenting… they both ended in my favor. If only all future scenarios could turn out this way…

When my son was 9, my husband and I bought him a guitar for his birthday. We thought he would think it was the coolest birthday present ever. My husband plays guitar and my son was getting “lessons” from him so this was a no-brainer. Unfortunately, my son didn’t really get into guitar playing like we hoped he would. We saw his guitar lessons go from an interest to a completely disliked chore.

First we pushed the guitar playing (without much success) with structured (boring) guitar lessons and practically made him play, then we decided to back off for a while. After thinking about it, we realized our son disliked playing the guitar so much because it was a “solo” project and he’s a very social person. We felt strongly about keeping him involved in music because we saw his natural talent with his guitar. We chose to research a better option that would hopefully be more motivating – The School of Rock.

The School of Rock has a performance based learning system with tons of group work. At age 11, we enrolled him into a semester of the School of Rock music program that involved group rehearsals, lessons, bands, and a “concert” performance at the end of the semester. It was a rough start… he was the youngest kid in his “band and had a lot of catching up to do in terms of his guitar playing. But soon enough, he was feeling totally comfortable, enjoyed the group setting, and was volunteering to play his guitar at rehearsal and even volunteering to sing! Working with his peers socially suited his interest more since he loves to be on stage. He is now much more motivated, having fun, and sticking with the guitar.

My daughter was 8 when she discovered an interest in gymnastics. Her gymnastics obsession started with playing with friends on the bars at the playground. She begged me to enroll her in a gymnastics class because she loved it so much. I signed her up and she went into that first class more eager than I’ve seen her. After the first class, they said she needed to move up to a higher level because she was beyond the basic skills so we switched to an intermediate class.

Right after the first intermediate session, my daughter was completely discouraged and wanted to quit gymnastics because she felt it was too hard and not as fun as she thought it would be. It is very difficult for parents to watch their own son or daughter bail on something so quickly because of the effort involved. Finding ways to discourage a child from quitting can be hard!

We did not let her quit gymnastics for two reasons – 1. because my daughter tends to shy away from anything that is highly challenging, and 2. this was an area that she normally loved and had a solid skill set for. Our approach was to sit down with our daughter and tell her that this experience would be good for her and that this was an opportunity for her to see how fun a challenging situation could be, how proud she could feel from working hard at something she loved, and how exciting it would be to see results come from it. It has been a huge success. I have never seen her work so hard at anything! And, she’s developing new skills, becoming more fit, and loving it. I even just looked at getting an Airflow to have at the house, because when she’s not at gymnastics, she’s practicing with friends in the yard.

2 different scenarios for finding ways to discourage a child from quitting required 2 different approaches to the wanting-to-quit issue. With my son, we had to search for a way for him to incorporate his guitar playing to suit his needs. My daughter needed to learn that hard work and dedication is needed to perform gymnastics at the level she wanted to achieve.

Even with the success of both cases, the parenting choices made were difficult for me to approach at the time. Was I forcing an issue when finding ways to discourage a child from quitting? Was I making my children do something they didn’t want to do simply because I wanted them to teach them a lesson? While I was initially uncomfortable with the idea my kids were thinking of quitting anything, I was encouraged by the challenge of finding creative ways to show them that quitting an activity they want to pursue can set them on the wrong path. After all, quitting is a hard habit to break once you become accustomed to it.

Finding Ways to Discourage A Child from Quitting – each situation is different

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