Five Things I Never Say to My Kids, and What I Say Instead: #4

(These are being published one at a time. Go here for #5. Stay tuned tomorrow for #3!)

#4 Don’t give up

The message this sends when we say it to our kids, I worry, is not just that they ought to stick with the things worth striving for – the grueling track work outs to become faster runners, the menial apprentice work necessary to earn one’s stripes in a profession, the heavy lifting of submitting application after application and essay after essay to dream colleges in the face of rejection letters – but that they also must never stop something they’ve started. 

I feel it’s a little delicate to discuss this very topic, since – at least by my estimation – a new generation of parents is rightfully tapping into a tool the previous couple generations didn’t harness as successfully: Grit. Grit is quite the trending thing right now (just open any parenting magazine) – AND IT SHOULD BE. We should be teaching kids that pushing through adversity is absolutely the only path to a courageous and meaningful life. We should be telling tales, the whole and messy stories, of the tenacious characters behind all household names – the Walt Disneys, the Einsteins, the Wright brothers of our world – whose list of failures far outnumber the final success that landed them big.

We should give quitting a bad name.

It’s just that it’s not always bad.

Amiright?

Stuff changes. Sometimes it’s circumstances that’s doing the changing. Sometimes it’s us that’s doing the changing. 

I’ve definitely started some stuff that was smart to stop, and I bet you have, too. (Raise your hand if you spent a year applying, getting vaccines, and packing for a two year assignment in Africa with the Peace Corps, only to get there and realize a romantic relationship you rekindled back in the states weeks before departing was one you decided to risk seeing through in exchange for passing on what you thought was your lifelong dream of teaching math to wide-eyed village students) (P.S. Four kids and a goofy marriage later, I’m glad I decided to jump back over the pond for that dream-disrupting guy.)

My point: Don’t persist just to persist. There is such a thing as persistence-turned-stupidity.

When my kids tell me their psyches are telling them to, “Abort,” “Change Course,” or “Quit,” the conventional wisdom police in my psyche want to immediately counter with “No, no, no. DON’T QUIT!” But what I’m learning to do instead is to coach them, “Listen deeply, my sweet: What is the tone of your “quit”? Is it a whisper? Or is it all lights-flashing-siren-bleeping-exclamation-mark-ending alarm? 

One is a request for space, a clearing of the path for something new. One is saying “ESCAPE IMMEDIATELY: THIS. SHIT. IS. TOO. HARD. AND. SCARY. FOR. US.” 

Fear is loud, and inspiration is quiet. 

So, here’s the formula to teach our little people: 

Stick with stuff, even when it’s hard

(and when fear is all loud and alarmy, simply place it as a background soundtrack, and get back to work)

UNLESS…

Life changes or you change or your persistence to see through certain stuff was misguided to begin with 

THEN…

Listen to the quiet whisperings that inspire a compass-pivot

THEN…

Be free, little birdy, be free!