The Art of Quitting: Parenting Our Children (and Ourselves) Through Quitting
by NoSorry Parent Lisa
What a Quitter!
I have quit so many things in my childhood that I cannot even recall them all. I have a pile of diaries, the first page of each declaring my intent to write religiously every day, only to come up empty after the first few pages. I have stories, abandoned in various stages of completion, from my days as a budding author. I wanted to be a horseback rider…I quit after three lessons. I wanted to be a singer, but took two lessons and then refused to go back. After two years of ballet, I hung up my slippers. After two lessons of tap dance, I hung up my shiny new tap shoes. A lifelong quitter, I have left behind friendships, hobbies, leadership positions, and careers. I have quit PTAs and School Site Councils. I have quit on play date groups and reading clubs. I have quit almost as many things as I have started in my life. I confess it’s true: I am a quitter!
When Quitting is Equated With Failing
Our society does not celebrate quitting. In fact, we aggrandize the very concept of being gritty and long-suffering in the face of adversity. Quitting, according to a long-held concept of American success, is the act of a true loser! Lance Armstrong declared, “Pain is temporary. Quitting lasts forever,” while Laird Hamilton glibly stated, “Quitting: easy. Daring to triumph: hard.”
We have all been sold a bill of goods that having grit is a surefire path towards both satisfaction and success, while quitting is a blight on our personhood and worth. Quitting is a negative word in our society. It is positioned as the opposite of grit: the devil on your left shoulder to the angel of perseverance on your right. As a result, when approaching the fork in the road on friendships, relationships, careers, hobbies, commitments, or obligations in which we have previously participated, we worry about disappointing those around us by quitting. Moreover, we may be made to feel like we are failing ourselves because we did not have the perseverance necessary to stay in those situations.
This societal perception of quitting, however, is misguided. Having the grit to stay in a bad situation is not always good for you. We are told that quitting is giving up, that it stems from a weakness in our very character. However, quitting is actually quite difficult! In addition to overcoming the potential stigma of being a quitter, we are also actively choosing to change our situation, and that is rarely an easier path than sticking with a less than fulfilling status quo. Quitting, quite frankly, can be scary, because we are choosing the unknown. However, once you have made the decision to quit something, you will find that quitting is almost always better than staying in a situation that makes you actively unhappy or unfulfilled.
Quitting is Choosing
There is both big quitting and small quitting in life, and both can be difficult to do. Small quitting involves changing smaller obligations or patterns you have been committed to, such as a club you joined, a hobby you were taking part in, a committee you agreed to serve on, and so forth. These activities come and go in our lives based on time of life. Sometimes we are involved in groups because we have young children, or agree to chair a committee as we look for ways to feel fulfilled in our retirement. Perhaps the activities fulfill a need within us for a time, but that does not mean they will always be important in our lives. Having a good balance in our daily lives can mean paring down obligations, and that requires a willingness to quit various activities and obligations to which we have committed.
Sometimes there are big things in life you need to quit. These can include long term friendships, marriages, the place you live in order to move elsewhere, or a job or a career that is no longer fulfilling or tenable. Contrary to society’s messaging, quitting any one of these things is not easy, nor is it typically done lightly. Quite frankly, our lives can be utterly transformed in positive ways by the very act of quitting, because it gets us out of places we really do not want to be. But it sure can be scary to venture into the unknown of something new! Sometimes life situations can turn extremely sour, and quitting is a way of having hope for new, exciting opportunities.
Oftentimes, quitting becomes about reclaiming a say in a situation. Rather than being perpetually the victim of a bad relationship or a negative work situation, the quitter is able to reclaim a sense of autonomy and agency over his own life. While things may not immediately or clearly be better from having quit a situation, at least the decision to do so was in the quitter’s hands. The decision was not made by those around him. It is always better to try to fix a bad situation in your life than to sit and stew in it, absorbing stress and distress that has nowhere to go but your own brain and body. Truly, quitting can be seen as an act of love - of love for yourself.
Quitting is a Skill
Quitting is not always easy, and it should never be done without plenty of self-reflection on the situation and of your place within it. Ask yourself: will quitting actually make you happier? Why are you quitting? Can the problem in the current situation be fixed with some amount of time and effort as quitting, and if it can, will the results be worth your energy? What do you want to do instead? Be honest with yourself when answering these questions, because quitting can be messy, so you want to make sure it will be worth it.
Look for the signs in a situation of when it is time to quit. Quitting is a survival mechanism, so take a step back and evaluate if your mental, physical, or emotional health are going to be improved by quitting. Ask yourself: is this situation or relationship making me feel burnt out? Am I hyper focusing on my source of stress? Am I avoiding this situation? Am I fearful for myself or my stability in this situation? Is this damaging my mental or physical health? Will it change if I stay in it? Is it worth staying in? It is better to know the answers to questions such as these well ahead of time, and it can be incredibly difficult and emotional to be brutally honest with yourself about your situation. But if you do the work and come out the other side knowing that quitting will be the best approach to changing the situation, then you can begin to strategically plan your quitting.
When dreaming about quitting a bad job or a bad manager, it can be satisfying to imagine yourself letting loose in a diatribe against the incompetence or injustice of the place, throwing office supplies around the room, or leaving a screaming litany of cuss words in your wake. However, this is just not a healthy way to change your life. Far better is the calculated quit! Reign in your anger and frustration, and channel it into planning instead. This will help you have a better landing on the other side of quitting. In a quitting situation, whether it entails leaving behind a job, a friendship, a relationship, or an obligation, think through the entirety of the transition to your future. Quitting is inherently destabilizing, but planning it thoughtfully and practically will help make it at least marginally smoother. Whenever possible, do not leave a current situation without having a semi-solid idea of how your next situation can be better.
Parenting a Quitter
Figuring out what approach to take as parents when it comes to watching our kids quit activities, friendships, and goals in their own lives presents its own difficulties! It helps to look at our children quitting things in a positive light. First, they are figuring out how to quit in healthy ways from a young age and when the stakes are low. How much better to learn how to stand up for their wants and needs now, so that in the future, when their quitting becomes more serious, they will have already developed the muscle and strategy for how to do it! Second, quitting things when you are young is entirely natural. Our children are figuring out their interests and their identities, and these things should not necessarily be set in stone from the time they are four and you happen to enroll them in a dance class! Maybe by age twelve, dancing no longer serves them, and they should absolutely be allowed and encouraged to go and find what does!
Similarly to quitting as adults, it is important to take your child’s quitting seriously. Teach them the skills of evaluation. What is their motivation for quitting? Is it because she is frustrated that the activity is getting more difficult and she is not as good as her peers? Is it because she genuinely does not enjoy the activity anymore? Is it because she is doing something different already, and does not logistically have the time for both activities? It is important to know the motivation for quitting so that we know as parents if this is a hasty decision being made out of frustration or if it is truly the desire of our child to quit.
As parents, our job is to play a supporting role in our children’s lives. We are here to listen, support, and provide a way to try new things. So while it is worth a real discussion with our children to suss out their reasons for quitting, we must then back away and let our kids decide. Let them feel agency young, so that they know what it feels like to control their own lives and activities. Let them build up a sense of confidence in their own skills of self-evaluation. We are not here to make the decision of whether or not to quit for our kids. This can seem obvious, but truly, it can be easier said than done.
Oftentimes, as parents, our own parenting identities get caught up in our children’s activities. If your child has played an instrument from a young age, and you have become a “booster parent” for the school’s band program, it can be incredibly hard for YOU to let your child turn away from band and do something else instead. What are you supposed to do now?! You were a band booster!! Similarly, if your child played competitive soccer, your entire family may have grown accustomed to planning all of your weekends for half a year at a time around attending travel games. You invested your own time, your money, and you probably built up friendships and made future plans based on this activity. It is no small thing to let your child quit because they no longer feel like playing soccer. Indeed, oftentimes the activities our kids participate in become family-defining, from the way we spend our time to the clothes we wear to the people we know. But our kids cannot be expected to remain in an activity for our sake as parents any more than we should stay in a situation that no longer serves us just because somebody else is more comfortable when we occupy that role.
The upsides to raising conscientious quitters far outweigh the downsides. If our kids have confidence that we will be willing to bend with THEIR wind, then they will be far more comfortable trying new things in life in general. Knowing that not every commitment needs to be a life-long commitment gives freedom in trying new things! Want to try student leadership? Run for ASB, and you can quit at the end of the year if you hate it! Want to try out for cross country? Go for it! Do something different next fall if running is not actually your thing! The more things our kids try on for size, the more ideas they will begin to gather as to their true interests and identities. And the more times our kids quit during their childhood years, the better they will become at smoothly and successfully quitting things that no longer serve them in their adult lives, an invaluable skill when trying to live life to the fullest!
Resources
Jones, Melissa. “When Your Daughter Wants to Quit Something She Used to Love.” Raising Confident Girls with Melissa Jones, ep. 132. 3/17/2026.
Keller, Julia, PhD. “Quitting: A Life Strategy.” Hachette Audio. 4/17/2023.
Princing, McKenna. “Quitting Isn’t Always Bad. Here’s the Best Way to Do It.” Right as Rain by UW Medicine. 12/18/2023. rightasrain.uwmedicine.org