Quitting Isn’t Failing. It Might Be the Bravest Thing Your Kid Can Do.

How to know if it’s okay to quit: what to ask your child, what to ask yourself, and what might grow in the space between “stick it out” and “walk away.”

“My Kid Wants to Quit Soccer. Should I Let Him?”

When my oldest was about 8, I sat cross-legged in the patchy grass with a squirmy toddler in my lap and a sticky, giggling first grader climbing on my back between bites of snacks, watching from the sidelines as he played soccer. Dressed in the whole kit, jersey, matching shorts, and shin guards, he looked adorable, but he wasn’t really playing soccer. He was staring at the sky. The other kids were tracking the ball, ready to pounce, but Nate? He was tracking airplanes overhead.

My heart pounded a little as I heard the other parents chatting about club teams and practice drills. There was one freckled little girl, with red-blond braids sticking out from her purple sweatband, who was handling the ball like an actual pro. The other kids banged bodies happily into one another in celebration every time the team scored. Not Nate. He just didn’t care that much.

On the drive home, he told us all about a flight pattern he’d been noticing for weeks. He was excited to look it up when we got home and find out where the plane was coming from as it headed to Newark airport, just a few miles from the dusty soccer field he played on. I shoved down the feeling that everyone else’s kid was excelling while mine was somewhere else entirely…

Later that afternoon, I turned around from the passenger seat to see my sweaty, dirt-covered little boy, his eyes lit up with excitement about planes, and said, “Hey Nate, did you know it’s your choice if you want to keep playing soccer or not? Dad and I are okay either way.”

He didn’t really respond; he just continued talking about airplanes, but something told me that he heard us, and that he knew that we were not going to push team sports on him, a child who wanted to be doing anything but running around on a field chasing a ball.

He finished the season, and we didn’t sign up again. There was never really a whole big discussion about it. Instead, there were lots of little ways we showed our boy that his true interests mattered to us more than “what everyone else was doing.”

Yes, I’m bragging. Because quitting isn’t failing and specializing early isn’t the only path to “success.”

That same airplane-watching kid is now a freshman at his dream school, Purdue University, studying aviation. He soloed a plane at 16, got his Private Pilot License at 17, and once he even flew me to Nantucket for lunch!

He didn’t discover team sports until mid-high school, but when he was ready, he crushed it. Back-to-back state champion. Two-time All-American. Silver medal at Nationals. Now he runs D1 track in the Big Ten.

Not because we pushed. But because we trusted his timing, and the research backs that up. Kids don’t need to specialize early. They need room to explore, to quit what doesn’t fit, and to find what lights them up.