My son wanted to quit.
When he was in second grade, he was on the wrestling team. He was (and still is) a lightweight, and he’s wiry and fast and he was surprisingly good.
This is my sensitive soul son, he’s a feeler. And he shocked us all when he was doing much better than expected because wrestling is not for the faint of heart. Wrestling is HARD.
This season, in third grade, he was hesitant to join again because his bestie wasn’t wrestling like last year. We encouraged him to try it again, see if he was interested again. He went to a few practices, a couple of friends were in it, he liked it enough to stay. We went along for a couple of months.
On the heels of winter vacation, he got sick with two viruses back to back and missed three weeks of practice.
Like I said, wrestling is hard. My feeler was feeling the feels of not enjoying the whole wrestling thing anymore. He didn’t want to go back. It was causing him strife, and he was very emotional about the whole thing. Thinking about it was really jamming up his works. It was even affecting his sleep.
Our first instinct was to make him stick it out. We are not about just quitting something that you committed to. We are also not about making our 8 year old kid do something that he really and truly isn’t enjoying. We don’t want him to wrestle for us. We want him to wrestle because it’s a thing he loves.
I’m not the one who has to do 2 hours of practice twice a week or get on the mat and battle someone at a tournament. I only have to shuttle him around and proudly watch him kick butt. Or sometimes proudly watch him get his butt kicked.
We wanted it to be his choice, but we also understand that he is 8 and needs guidance.
We told him he had to go to at least one more practice to be sure he wasn’t going to regret leaving. We also told him if he wanted to be done, he had to be the one to turn in his gear and shake Coach’s hand and say thank you. Which was pretty intimidating for him to learn that he’d have to be the one to announce his resignation.
If he was going to quit, we weren’t going to make it too easy for him.
Well, my boy went in scared and told Coach wrestling wasn’t a good fit for him this season. He shook his hand and said thank you for coaching me. He looked him in the eye and owned up to his decision.
That was probably harder for him than any opponent he faced on the mat.
We are so proud of our boy.
This was so much bigger than wrestling. This was a life lesson for him that there will be things in life that he will want to get out of; relationships, jobs, other commitments. And if he wants to get out of something, he needs to do it right. He needs to know he can’t just run away. He needs to know that it doesn’t benefit him to make a snap decision. He also needs to know he shouldn’t stay in a situation that isn’t healthy or good for him anymore. He needs to find that balance and make an informed decision.
Looking for ways to find balance or make tough decisions? A coach can help you with that. Reach out to me at [email protected] and we’ll see if working together is a good fit.