Why You Want Your Kids To Quit: The Value of Overcoming Challenges
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Focus
Challenge is how we grow, and there’s nothing more challenging than quitting! But if we just give in when we want to quit, then we’ve missed out on meeting that challenge. Wanting to quit is a powerful moment, don’t miss it!
Summary
Explore the paradoxical idea that wanting to quit certain activities can be valuable for kids. The experience of overcoming the urge to quit teaches important life skills. We’ll discuss how navigating the feelings and thoughts associated with quitting can build resilience, improve decision-making, and uncover personal motivations.
- Quitting is an inevitable part of life that teaches valuable lessons in resilience and self-awareness.
- Effective quitting involves navigating complex feelings and thoughts, turning these moments into opportunities for growth.
- Programs like Risky Kids provide supportive environments for kids to face and learn from the desire to quit.
- Parents and educators should validate feelings, encourage reflection, and collaborate on solutions rather than pushing for quitting.
- Facing and overcoming the desire to quit builds resilience, uncovers motivations, and prepares kids for future challenges.
Why You Want Your Kids To Quit
You don’t! And neither do we. BUT we do want them to sometimes WANT to quit.
This might sound strange, or even cruel but we promise that it’ll all make sense by the end of this!
Things end, it’s a part of life and sometimes they end because they have to, and sometimes they end because we end them. Quitting is something which is going to be a part of our lives. We’ll quit jobs, relationships and when we’re young we’ll quit hobbies and sports.
Why would this be something which we want to happen though, what’s to learn and also what’s at stake if this doesn’t happen? I believe that the two most important moments in a journey are our first step, and the one we think is our last.
Because Quitting Is An Art
Just like most things, we can get good at quitting. Or more specifically, navigating our thoughts and feelings around quitting.
- Mastering quitting involves understanding and navigating complex emotions and decisions.
- Quitting scenarios vary, from kids wanting to stop activities to adults reconsidering commitments.
- Reflecting on and discussing the urge to quit can foster resilience and personal growth.
Everyone who reads this will have been through times when they’ve quit something and knew they shouldn’t have, when they quit something and knew it was the right choice and have quit things and didn’t even notice! We experience a range of thoughts and feelings when we face circumstances that make us want to quit.
If you’re a parent, it could be that your kid wants to quit a music lesson, or you’ve started a hike and they want to stop. If you’re a teacher, it could be that a kid wants to give up on a project by putting in the minimum effort. If you’re an outdoor educator, they might be refusing to go on the big swing!
Thoughts and feelings can be examined though, and changed and improved. If we didn’t believe that we could increase our resilience, or our thinking skills, then it might make sense to just quit without hesitation. It’s not the case though, we can get better, and these times where young people feel like they want to quit are precious moments where we can learn more about who they are and help them shape themselves.
Finding the Why
My History in Extreme Endurance
When I used to run Extreme Endurance events I would have one goal in mind. I would want to get everyone to the point where they wanted to quit. I didn’t do this because I enjoyed watching them suffer, or because I wanted to watch people fail. Anyone could do that and just push them too far, too hard and berate and try to break them. I’d been through that kind of experience myself before.
That’s not to say the sessions weren’t tough. But they were tough for the right reasons. While there would be the physical side of it, with running and rucks and carry’s and climbs, there were also other times where I’d use boredom, silence and stillness to evoke tough emotions. One of the most difficult challenges I ever deployed was just moving some pieces of rice around!
I wanted them to have those quiet moments where they had to find a reason to stay, to have the thought “I want to quit” so that they would have to follow up with “why”. It was many a time where I saw people wrestle with these thoughts, and plenty of times my instructors and I would have to help a person find their reason. Those were important moments and people would come up to me afterwards and tell me that they didn’t really know why they had signed up, but that they found their reasons while they were out there.
My time running those events shaped my choices about what was important for Risky Kids. Not to push kids to want to quit, but to provide them with a space where they could feel that way and a team was equipped to help them navigate it, to provide them with challenges which were balanced enough that they would have to face those feelings, but for reasons which mattered.
Why Quitting Happens
The reason that young people will want to quit is entirely down to avoidance.
- Young people quit to avoid uncomfortable feelings, not necessarily due to failure.
- Difficulty distinguishing challenging learning from ineffective teaching leads to quitting.
- Repetition and persistence are key to mastering skills, a concept not always understood.
They won’t want to feel a particular feeling, and the way to avoid it is to quit! That doesn’t mean they’re wrong, or that avoidance is bad. It can be the healthiest, smartest thing in the world! But we have to remember, young people don’t have a world of experience and their minds are still growing.
They often can’t differentiate between wanting to quit something because it’s hard because they’re learning, and wanting to quit something because it’s hard because they have a poor teacher.
Once we had a young girl who had begun the program, and for the first term she progressed along as expected! She enjoyed the newness and the challenge of the program, and was proud of the things she was learning. But after that first term she stopped enjoying it. When we spoke with her and her family, we learned she’d never stuck at anything for much longer than a term or two. We talked with her, and no one had ever told her that learning slows down, and that to become great at something you had to just do a lot of repetition, especially of the basics! She had thought because things didn’t feel new any more, that she was failing, and she didn’t want to feel that way.
Quitting In The Right Space
This is why it’s so important to find places where young people can feel these feelings and be guided through them.
- Supportive environments are crucial for guiding youth through the complexities of quitting.
- Programs like Risky Kids teach self-discipline, emotional management, and resilience.
- Encouraging exploration of feelings, not promoting quitting, fosters growth and understanding.
Don’t just take quitting language or behaviour as face value, it’s so much deeper than that and you need to help your young people explore it!
Programs like Risky Kids, Scouts or even Martial Arts like Karate are great ways to navigate this. The instructors are focused on the development of the individual, and helping them to learn self discipline and manage their emotions and be their best. Make sure that when you’re getting involved in programs, hobby or sports, that it’s providing an environment where it’s OK to fail, but that it’s also OK to want to quit.
This doesn’t mean it’s a licence TO quit, but that there’s a plan to help young people, and that we’re giving them a place to understand and learn about those feelings.
How To Get It Right
In the moments where a young person wants to quit, you’re going to want to take action.
- Respond with measured, balanced actions focused on understanding, not just protection.
- Validate feelings, then probe deeper to understand underlying emotions and thoughts.
- Collaborate on solutions, encouraging resilience and positive choices rather than quitting.
In the moments where a young person wants to quit, you’re going to want to take action. That’s not the wrong thing to do, but you need to make sure your approach is measured, balanced and focused on the right things. Whether you’re a parent, an educator or even a Risky Kids Coach your instincts might be to protect. Just remember, that the value of exploring and mastering quitting behaviour is well worth the discomfort.
First off, make sure the young person is heard. If they say they’re bored, make sure you let them know you’ve heard they’re bored! “I’m sorry you’re bored, that can’t be fun”. This is called Validation. It lets the person know you’re listening, and believe their problems are genuine.
Secondly, start to dig deeper. Ask some follow up questions like:
- “And how did that make you feel?”
- “Why do you think that upset you so much?”
- “What other thoughts/feelings did you have?”
- “What was going through your mind when that happened?”
- “When you say you felt anxious/angry/frustrated/sad/bored can you describe what that feels like for you?”
Finally, collaborate on some solutions to make things BETTER. Make sure you don’t just go straight for making things easier (e.g. quitting). Ask your Risky Kid some final questions to steer them toward positive choices:
- “What would you have liked to have happen instead?”
- “How do you think we can make that happen next time?”
- “What strengths do you have that might help you achieve that?”
- “How would you help a friend who was going through this same moment?”
Want to learn more about emotional development?
What Is Risky Play in Kids, And What Does It Do?Three Lessons for Each Family. Easy Resilience? Yes Please.The Obstacle Is The Way
The reason you want your kid to want to quit, is because they’re going to want to quit in life! There are times when quitting is the wrong thing to do, when we’ve only quit because we didn’t know how to persevere or challenge our own thinking.
In order to stop that from happening, when young people are growing and learning, we need them to face moments where they want to quit. We need to give them challenges and challenging feelings, not just for the sake of those feelings, but because they’re rich and deep and meaningful parts of being human, often just as worthwhile as any feelings of joy or contentment.
By going through adversity and challenge (not all the time mind you!) we build up resilience to be able to face future challenges, we develop skill sets to be able to navigate those moments and we also learn how to quit in a way which leaves us stronger and healthier when we need to.
Most of all, it fills our lives with experiences. It helps us find our “why” in the moments that matter the most.
Richard Williams
Risky Kids Founder, Director of Programming
Richard Williams is a fitness industry consultant, gym owner, business coach and professional stunt actor with more than a decade of experience in the health and fitness industry. With an education in psychology and criminology, Richard blended life experience as a fitness industry consultant with Spartan Race, gym owner, elite-obstacle racer, ultra-runner and professional stunt actor to create the Risky Kids program.
Richard has a passion for enacting meaningful social change through all avenues of health and wellbeing and believes that obstacles are the way. Some of Richard’s key achievements include:
- Key consultant/coordinator Spartan Race/Tough Mudder/Extreme Endurance
(Australia/NZ/Global) - OCR World Championship Finalist – Team & Solo (2015)
- OCR World Championship Silver Medallist – Team Endurance (2018)
- Professional film and television stunt performer for 15 years
Considered one of Australia’s foremost experts in the fields of fitness, wellbeing and behavioural science, Richard is frequently in demand as a guest speaker for relevant government and non-
government bodies and organisations. Speaking engagements centred on the success of the Risky Kids program, philosophy and approach have included:
- Expert speaker/panellist Sports & Camp; Recreation Victoria and Outdoors Victoria forums
- Closing expert speaker at the Australian Camps Association National Conference
- Expert speaker at the National Fitness Expo, FILEX
