This article pertains to a small bit of insight I’ve gained as both a father and a teacher…
I wear many hats. I work as a reading coach and response to intervention teacher at a local elementary school, I write my books, and I take on editing jobs whenever called upon. But my primary hat, is that of the head instructor at a martial arts dojo. So it’s more like a headband than a hat. I work with kids of all ages, including adults, and I absolutely love the job far greater than my previous main career as an English teacher. It’s still education, though in a different environment, and a different set of skills. But what we teach in the dojo is as equally important as what’s taught in public schools, if not more. We’re not just showing kids how to punch and kick, you know. We’re not just working on anti-bully techniques and personal safety awareness. We constantly shape these children in a way in which self-control, self-discipline, and respect for others become major factors in their lives. Positive character development is our number one goal for the children that come into our dojo, and there are many whose lives have changed for the better because they’d once stepped through those doors and walked a more enlightening path. It’s true; I’ve seen it with my own eyes: our students, over the long run, have developed, not just physically, but intellectually and socially as well, and quite thoroughly I might add. This, in turn, has positively affected their drive in other parts of of their lives. My students have adopted the principles and core values of the martial arts, and have also applied them in their school, family, and social environments. To me, that’s the best way to educate.
Sadly though, a good many students who come here get very little out of it. Why? They don’t stay long enough. There comes a point when a student either grows bored or comes to the realization that they’re not going to see overnight results. So I get a call from the parent, telling me their child has lost interest, and that they’d like to cancel their enrollment. That’s part of the business, I know. And I also know that some kids, just don’t like the activity their parents sign them up for and want to try something else. And for their sake, I hope they find something they can really enjoy. With that said, parents, if your child does find something that he/she seems to enjoy, make them stick with it. Whatever it is.
Here’s the thing, I’ve seen kids who jump from one activity to the next roughly every six months, because each time the kid gets bored with the flavor of the month, they complain that they don’t want to go to the class/practice/club meeting/etc anymore, and the parents cave. We cave because we’re dog-tired after a long day of work and we just don’t feel like dealing with our kid whining in the car all the way to their activity, not to mention the fear of them behaving inappropriately in front of the other kids and parents as an act of defiance should you put your foot down and make them go anyway. I know, trust me, I do. It’s easier to say, “Fine. You don’t want to go anymore. I’m not going to force you. It just means I don’t have to drive you back and forth every day.” But in the long run, you’re doing a disservice to your kid. Here are a few things to consider when your child wants to drop an activity that you know to be good for them.
- You’re Inadvertently Programming Your Child to Give Up Easily in Life. If you cave when your child starts giving you a hard time about making them go to their extracurricular activity, convincing yourself that you don’t want to be that militant parent that forces your kids to do something they don’t like, it’s likely that your kid will jump from one activity to the next with the same result. They lose interest and they don’t want to go anymore. Or worse yet, they come to something about the activity that seems challenging to them, so they don’t want to go anymore. If you give in to this, they get it into their heads that it’s okay to run away from or avoid challenges, which really hinders their growth in maturity and mental determination. What you should do to avoid this, without becoming that militant parent, is promote the importance of sticking with something you start until the end, but also give them an appropriate time frame with which to determine if they’re sure they want to quit or not. For example, my oldest daughter joined the high school swim team her freshman year. After a couple weeks of the intense conditioning practices at the beginning, she wanted to quit, convinced the swim team was not for her. My wife and I wouldn’t let her. We told her she needed to do her best and get through the season whether she enjoyed it or not, because by quitting without finishing, she would only bring negative effects on herself. But we also told her that once the season ended, if she still hated it, then she wouldn’t have to rejoin the next season. But she at least had to finish what she had already started. As much of a pain it was to drive her to swim practice with her teenage attitude and pouting, we did it anyway. By the end of that first season, her body had adapted to the rigorous training, and eventually she no longer complained, but felt good about her health and fitness. And, by sticking with it the whole season, she made a few good friends. The next year, she couldn’t wait for swim season to start. But the important thing here is that she learned a valuable lesson. In all other aspects of her life since her freshmen year, our daughter has taken difficult challenges head on instead of turning tail and running, and I couldn’t be more proud as a father.
- Your child won’t experience the long-term benefits of hard work. When your child plays a sport, an instrument, or partakes in some other extracurricular activity for the first time, it’s most likely because something or someone inspired them to try it out. In the case of martial arts, the kid may have seen a cool movie with amazing kung fu moves. But then they try it out for a couple of months and soon realize that they’re not going to become the Dragon Warrior overnight. To get to that level of skill requires years and years of discipline and effort. So most times, they get discouraged and therefore lose interest. It’s true: no one wants to spend their free time playing a sport or doing an activity they don’t excel at, but people tend to love doing what they’re good at. So what do you think it takes to get good at anything? Keep your child in the sport or skilled activity. Work with them in the backyard. Show them that you’re taking an interest in their activity. Eventually, the extra practice pays off. Eventually, a point will come when your child has advanced his/her motor skills in that activity, and it will come easily to them. Then there’s a good chance their motivation will once again increase proportionately with their skill level.
- Your child’s sudden lack of interest might just be a phase. Other than maybe video games and candy, the interest level your child has in activities will rise and fall sporadically. If they come to a point in learning a sport or skill in which it becomes more challenging, that’s usually when interest will drop. If you give in to your kids’ wishes and pull them out, they may fall into that cycle in which they jump from one activity to the next throughout their childhood. They’ll never become really good at any one thing, and they’ll develop that habit of subconsciously believing it’s okay to give up on things, as mentioned before. Give the child time to allow his/her interest in the activity to climb up again before making the decision to pull him/her out. You might be surprised to see their attitude toward their activity change after just a few more months.
- Your child may not mean what he/she says. This may sound familiar to many parents: Anyone have that kid that whines that he doesn’t want to go to practice, but you make him go anyway, and then while he’s at practice he’s enjoying himself? This is more common than you think! When your child is engaged in something recreational at home, watching his favorite TV show, playing on the X-Box, or hanging out with his neighborhood friends out front, and it’s time to go to his extracurricular activity, OF COURSE he’s going to say he doesn’t want to go! I hear parents tell me often, “Sorry Johnny missed class the other day. He was playing with his friends in the backyard and he just didn’t want to go. And I was tired of arguing with him. I’m getting worried that he’s losing interest in karate.” I then suggest that next time they should not let the kid have a choice and make him go anyway just to see. I also use my youngest kid as an example, who does not want to go to his martial arts class when he’s in the middle of doing something else. My wife makes him go anyway, and in the car he whines and pouts, but once he’s here in the dojo, he’s participating quite well and having tons of fun. See, the wonderful thing about kids is that they truly live in the present much more than we adults do. They certainly don’t dwell on the past, and they don’t really worry about the future all that much either. They don’t grasp the concept of long-term consequences. So when your kid is presently engaged in that Pokemon card game with his brother, until he gets bored with it, he’s not going to consider any future activities or how much fun they’ll be. In his mind, he’s already having fun, and to stop doing it in order to make it to practice would stop that fun. Trust me though, by the time he gets to practice and starts the activities that go along with it, he’ll have moved on from that card game he was playing earlier.
- Giving in to your child can weaken the impact you have as a parent. Let’s take the example above about the parent not making their child go to their activity simply because said parent was “tired of arguing with him.” Sure, this happens to us all every now and then, but if a parent lets that happen too often, the truth of the matter is that it’s going to give that parent all kinds of problems in the long run. First, that parent is allowing their children to manipulate/control the situation. Eventually those children could show a lack of respect for the authority their parents are supposed to have over them. Secondly, the children now subliminally understand that there are ways to get out of doing the things they’re supposed to do, and they will be more likely to test their parents’ rules on every level just to see what else they can get away with. Something my sensei always says is that parents call the shots and have the control, because parents should know what’s best for their children. As soon as a parent gives in to their kid who “doesn’t want to go to practice anymore,” that parent is no longer able to do what’s best for his/her child because that parent has just surrendered control… control that your child is nowhere near ready to have.
- Your child could develop into someone considered unreliable. If we allow our children to quit an activity too easily, they will believe that the extracurricular activity isn’t all that important. And maybe it’s not, but that could lead to the same attitude with similar things later on in life. Suppose my wife and I had allowed our daughter to quit the swim team when the conditioning practices became difficult for her. Not only would that decision have had negative consequences on our daughter’s mentality, but it could have affected others as well. She was given a spot on a team. Leaving that spot could’ve meant letting her team down, which in turn could’ve hurt her reputation at school, possibly blacklisting her from other sports teams. I had the lead in this one school play back in high school, in which the female lead dropped the show the same week we were supposed to open because she felt she was under too much stress at the time. We had three days to get a replacement. The quality of the performance was quite affected. Fortunately we pulled through and salvaged an adequate performance. But that young lady who dropped was never cast in another show. Furthermore, other school department heads steered clear of her, never giving her any roles that made her a necessity. And those of us who were in that one show never thought that highly of her afterwards. That was over twenty years ago, and to this day, if I ever reflect back on that situation, I only remember her as the girl who let everyone of us down.
Okay; time for a reality check. A lot of the examples I’ve given seem to be a bit extreme. And there’s the other side of it. If your kid is on a soccer team where the coach is verbally abusive, and your kid is not improving at all; in fact he’s to the point of having a nervous breakdown every time you tell him it’s time for practice, you probably shouldn’t do more long-term damage to the poor kid by forcing him to keep going. But in most cases, this isn’t how it is in reality.
Listen, if your children are involved in an activity that you know in your heart to be good for them, and they show signs of losing interest, don’t pull the plug right away. Have them stick it out for a while to see if their attitude changes. Also, let the coach/instructor/leader know about it. Perhaps they will have insight on the matter. Even better, they might give your child a little more one-on-one attention. It could be that your child just needs a little more encouragement from the mentor, a little assurance that he’s doing just fine and will keep getting better with time.
It’s said that only one in ten thousand people who start taking martial arts make it to black belt, and that only 5% of all boy scouts make it to eagle scout. But those who do get that far have done so with a strong sense of commitment, and I guarantee you they also understand the positive results of hard work and dedication. The same could be said of any child who has had a sense of commitment instilled in him through involvement in some extracurricular sport or activity. And that’s why sticking with something like that is so important. It’s not really about becoming the best ball player, piano player, martial artist, choir member, etc… What it’s really about is character development: something we as parents should focus on when raising our children more than anything. What it’s really about is our children’s futures. Something else my sensei always says: either we parents struggle to instill good habits in our children at a young age, or we struggle twice as hard to repair the bad habits in them at an older age.
