Apparently I’m a bad parent (according to a large number of parenting books my wife has read) because I think my kid should drop an activity she isn’t good at/doesn’t care enough about to be good at it.
Wife: “Sophie had a bad day at the chess club today. She apparently lost all her games, and the other kids noticed and said something.”
Me: “Huh. That’s not surprising.”
“I’m telling her how to handle it… do you have any ideas?”
“Not really. She should drop the club after this school year, though.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, she should drop it after this year.”
“Why?”
“Because of two facts: (1) She never, ever asks to play the game while at home, even though she has a chess board set up in the living room, and (2) I bought her a chess teaching program for her DS and the child hasn’t put it in the system since December 26th.”
“But why should she give it up? She just needs to be better at it.”
“Well, perhaps. But she hasn’t shown a bit of desire to be better at it. And the time of ‘gimme’s’ is drawing to a close for her… she’s going to be entering an age where games become contests and scoring actually counts. And since she hasn’t shown any true desire to play, other than when we remind her that she needs to play, I don’t think we really need to bother with this. We tried it, she’s not that interested, time to move to the next thing. Lastly, it’s not as if chess is a life-skill that will come in handy at crucial moments.”
“But it’s supposed to help her with brain development.”
“How is her brain being developed if she plays 2 games a month and loses both of them?”
… and here’s where I get to the meat of this thread…
“You know, in all the parenting books I’ve read, and I’ve read dozens of them, I cannot remember a single one counseling one to just ‘give up’ because your kid isn’t good at an activity. They always talk about more practice, or varying practice styles to suit your kids personalities, or whatever.”
“Well, that’s just stupid. ‘Practice more’ is fine advice as long as we’re talking about something the kid wants to do - but I haven’t seen any indication that she really wants to play chess, other than her desire to please us. And if one is not good at something, and becoming visibly so, then why not focus on the things that you are good at? To make a simple analogy, if I had a stereotypical nerd for a son, I would be doing him a disservice to force him to be on the football team.”
“Well, I can’t believe you just want her to give up!”
“I’m not saying give up the game, just give up the chess club. I’m telling you, as she gets older, the kids will get better, she won’t, and she’ll lose game after game. She’ll get a reputation as an easy win, and, imho, the damage done to her psyche and self-esteem will be far greater than any supposed ‘brain development’. And eventually, the competition will be serious enough where they won’t want her on the team… and where will she be then, if we push this for a few years, giving her the idea that this is somehow important to us and she is failing at it?”
So, there’s the “chess club discussion”, but I’m also interested in a general talk about when it is appropriate for a parent to say to a kid “You know, it’s OK to stop/quit/give up on this.” Is it OK to council quitting? Was there a time when you wish your parents had let you quit an activity… and are you better or worse when they acceded/refused to bow to your wishes?