This can make it so easy for us to find ourselves on the wrong side of decisions, or guiding young people through their own.

This is why balance, and self reflection is key to this whole process. Nobody gives you a handbook on how to raise kids, and that’s because there’s no one way to do it. As we tell the kids you have to find “your way”, and in fact that’s the point. Becoming a great parent, guardian or educator is about being in those moments, challenging ourselves. That’s what makes it worthwhile.

In our first two articles we explored how quitting is a skill, and what the difference is between healthy and unhealthy quitting. In our final article we’re going to look at what obstacles we need to overcome as the grown ups in these moments, what excuses we might make for ourselves or our young people that can lead to unhealthy quitting.

Every moment that we’re in with young people we’ll need to balance out all the variables. When they’re telling you that they’re unhappy about something that happened at school, you’ve got to take into account a whole variety of things! Is this a pattern? What’s the other side of the story? Is something else going on that might be making them more fragile at this time?

That doesn’t mean we can’t get good at it though, practice makes possible! The more you face challenging moments together with your young person, like them wanting to quit something or give up, the better you’ll both get at communicating to one another and navigating those moments.

One of the key things to balance is autonomy vs executive parenting. There are times when you just have to make decisions for your young people which are best for them, to ask them to trust in you even if they don’t like a decision. There’s nothing wrong with this approach, because young minds aren’t fully formed, young people haven’t had enough experiences to know what’s best for them. That being said, they won’t grow, or have those experiences if we make all of the decisions for them. Neither answer is right though. You can’t let kids make all their own decisions, and you can’t make all the decisions for them.

For example, if your young person has said that they don’t enjoy something but not yet asked to quit, you wouldn’t want to tell them you’ll unenrol them, and you also wouldn’t want to tell them that they need to stick it out. In both cases you’ve removed their autonomy. Engage with those thoughts and feelings, explore them and give them tools to navigate the situation. If they didn’t apply those tools, then you could make an executive decision and tell them they need to remain enrolled until they’ve put in the effort to overcome the challenge.

Another obstacle is that there are genuine constraints on your time to navigate every challenge with young people. Helping them navigate challenges is tough, and takes emotional labour. Sometimes it’s just about getting through the day as a family and families and educators shouldn’t be expected to handle every situation perfectly, we’re learning how to guide just as young people are learning how to be.

Kids aren’t the only ones who will use avoidance in the face of tough times! And there’s no tougher time than watching a young person we care about be unhappy. But that’s the responsibility we sign up for, to be able to endure those moments with our young people, not just to make everyone comfortable.

At Risky Kids we’ve identified 4 behaviours adults respond with during quitting behaviour, and we learned them because we do them! They’re natural reactions to seeing a young person struggle, but we need to master them.

• Superficial Narratives – When a young person tells us they’re bored, or something’s easy, we want to believe them right away and act, to solve the problem! But this is just the surface we’re scratching, their behaviours. We need to know their thoughts, their feelings and WHY this has happened. We should use the Validate and Guidance tools from Part 2 to dig deeper. “I’m sorry to hear that, can you tell me what’s changed to make you feel that way?”
• Harm Reduction – We can often get caught up in stopping young people being harmed, that we might find it hard to tell the difference between harm, and discomfort. Being unhappy, or uncomfortable often accompanies being challenged and growing. We need to face failure and our weaknesses which is hard. This isn’t the same as being harmed. Real harm is building an aversion to adversity, lifelong anxiety disorders or poor resilience. If you catch yourself saying “I don’t want to force them to do anything they don’t want to” instead ask yourself the question “What’s best for them?”
• Perfection Seeking – So many families also feel like it’s their job to get everything right, and that there’s a “perfect” program or hobby for their kid. While there might be options which resonate more with who they are, remember they’re still learning who they are! Because of the challenge of learning itself (see the articles on the Stages of Becoming), no matter what you choose, there MUST be adversity. If you find yourself responding to your kids quitting behaviour with “this must not be their thing” then you might be falling into this trap. Instead, explore their reasoning and find the cause of their discomfort and if it needs to be overcome.
• Bargaining – It’s healthy to create agreements with kids! We do it all the time at Risky Kids as part of the program. However bargaining is when we make sacrifices on value to try and get what we want. The difference is also that when we bargain, we’re often validating avoidance behaviour in advance (see Part 2 on Validation). When you say “Just try it and if you don’t like it you can quit” or “Just do a few more sessions and then you can quit” you’ve made a promise, focused on quitting being the objective. Instead, try language like “Challenging ourselves is important, let’s do this together and I’ll help you if there’s any problems” or  “If you’re having trouble let’s talk to your coaches/teacher/friend about things. I can help you with what you can ask if you’d like?”

These are just a few examples, but they’re ways that all adults will respond to a young person who’s struggling. The way to tell when they’re unhealthy is if it just makes things easier, but with no growth achieved. If the young person we’re responsible for hasn’t learned from the challenge and engaged in Healthy Quitting, then it’s likely that we’ve used one of these four to avoid our own discomfort.

Once you see yourself making these mistakes though, remember instead to replace them with the Validate and Guidance tools from Part 2.

The times young people run out of tools and need our help, some of the most pivotal times for them to learn deep lessons about themselves and their worlds. Making the most of these moments is about not just having the tools, but understanding their value.

If we don’t engage with quitting behaviour, and turn them into learning moments, then there’s only going to be short term comfort. Letting a kid quit without helping them might make them happy in the immediate future, you might see relief on their faces and visibly see the anxiety diminish. You’ll feel like you’ve made the right decision. But unless you’ve gone through the Healthy Quitting process, then processes have begun which in the long run will make parenting harder, and that young person’s future experiences harder.

Without facing these moments, young people’s resilience will diminish. They’ll confuse discomfort with negativity and be unable to distinguish between necessary discomfort and unnecessary. They’ll never learn the joy and triumph of overcoming the desire to quit and coming out the other side stronger. This will mean they quit more often, and quicker. Parenting will get harder as you have to fight every battle for them, and move them between programs and hobbies more often.

If they don’t learn how to end things well for themselves, to take responsibility and challenge themselves, then future relationships, jobs, hobbies and pursuits are going to suffer. Any experience which involves discomfort has the chance of driving them away, with no tools to navigate it. Not just that, they’ll leave without a trace.

Not only do we get to share deep and meaningful moments with young people, they’ll surprise us, they’ll grow before your eyes and triumph.

They’ll also develop real and lasting resilience. This means future adversity they’ll be able to face alone, or with less assistance and guidance from you. They’ll become more responsible and capable of fighting their own battles. They will learn not just the Art of Quitting, but also the art of not-quitting!

We have a responsibility to help young people face challenges, to navigate them and to become stronger. When a young person wants to quit something, this is one of the biggest moments for them, the ones where they’ve run out of tools to do it themselves and when they need us the most.