Why Children Quit Jiu-Jitsu…

And Why Allowing Them to Quit May Not Always Be in Their Best Interest

A boy begins Jiu-Jitsu.  He is curious and experiences joy in putting on kimono, playing the games, and in the discovery of what his body can do. He struggles, laughs, learns and make friends— then one day, something changes and he no longer wishes to attend.

Perhaps the classes have become difficult, the novelty has worn off, or he would rather be somewhere else.

And the parent is confronted with a decision…

Should he be made to continue? Or should his wishes be respected?

One parent insists that children must learn discipline and perseverance.

Another believes that forcing a child to participate in something he does not enjoy will only create resentment.

Both may be correct or incorrect but neither addresses the only question that matters:

What is actually happening within the child?

The Mistake of Confusing Interest With Enjoyment

There is a belief that if a child genuinely enjoys an activity, he will naturally want to participate.  But this is not necessarily so.

A child may love Jiu-Jitsu and still dread attending class.  He may enjoy learning techniques but dislike the discomfort of having them applied against him. He may enjoy his training partners but feel intimidated by certain situations and may enjoy winning but become discouraged when progress becomes difficult to recognize.

Interest is not always constant; it fluctuates. Perhaps one of the greatest mistakes a parent can make is treating a temporary feeling as a permanent reality.

A child who dislikes today's lesson may find himself completely absorbed in tomorrows.

A child who struggles with one area of Jiu-Jitsu may discover an unexpected aptitude for another.

The content changes, as do the training partners and the child’s abilities, but with these changes, his relationship with Jiu-Jitsu will change overtime as well.

To quit at the first appearance of disinterest is to assume that what the child feels today is what he will feel a few months from now, and a feeling is not necessarily a conclusion.

The Child Who Needs Jiu-Jitsu the Most

Not every child arrives at a martial arts school with the same temperament.  Some are naturally assertive, competitive, and comfortable with confrontation while others are gentle, compassionate and sensitive to the feelings around them. They may have no interest in dominating another, and uncomfortable with aggression even in a controlled environment. For these children, Jiu-Jitsu can be particularly challenging… but it may also be very valuable.

The world does not always respond kindly to gentleness… A compassionate child may eventually encounter people who mistake that compassion for weakness. 

A child who avoids confrontation may discover that confrontation does not always avoid him…  And a child who has never learned to assert himself physically may find himself in situations where his inability to do so affects far more than his immediate safety.

It may affect how he sees himself.

This does not mean gentle children need to become aggressive.

Quite the opposite.

The purpose of Jiu-Jitsu is not to replace gentleness with aggression. It is to allow gentleness to exist without helplessness.

A child should not have to abandon his nature to feel secure in the world.  He should not have to become cruel to protect himself from cruelty. He should not have to become confrontational simply because others may be, but he may benefit enormously from discovering that he is capable of handling confrontation when it arrives— a discovery which may not arrive easily.

It may involve discomfort, frustration, fear and periods during which he would rather not attend class at all.

Does his reluctance necessarily mean that Jiu-Jitsu is wrong for him?  Or might it mean that he is encountering precisely the kind of difficulty that makes the experience valuable?

There is no universal answer; each child is different — but the distinction deserves serious consideration.

The Environment Is Always Teaching

Children are influenced by the environments they spend their time in. Not merely by what they are explicitly taught, but by what they routinely observe and are exposed to.

The child surrounded by others who work through difficulty and who take responsibility for their actions is exposed to something.

The child who regularly witnesses effort, cooperation, restraint, and determination may gradually begin to adopt these qualities himself.

Not because someone has lectured him about their importance, but because they have become part of his ordinary experience.

This is one of the overlooked benefits of a competent martial arts school— the value of attending does not exist exclusively in the techniques being taught, it exists in the environment itself.

A child may not particularly enjoy the technique being covered that month. He may not feel that he is making progress or even look forward to class. Yet he is still participating in an environment where physical challenges are encountered, where other children are trying to improve, and where difficulties can be faced rather than avoided.

There may be development taking place that neither the child nor the parent can immediately recognize.

What I Wish My Family Had Done

As a child I participated briefly in martial arts, then decided that I no longer wished to attend. I was permitted to stop without resistance and at that time, I was pleased.

In the years that followed, I experienced bullying through out school and these experienced affected the vision I had of myself.  It affected my confidence, the sense of who I was, and the relationship I had with the world around me.

Years later my interest in martial arts returned, and as my confidence and vision of myself gradually improved, I understood what I had been missing for such important years of my life and wished my family had not allowed me to quit. Not because martial arts would necessarily have prevented everything that happened, but because I came to recognize what continued exposure to that environment might have offered me.

Physical confidence, familiarity with confrontation, a growing understanding of my own capabilities, and perhaps a different perception of myself during those difficult years.

My family could not have known what was coming – they were responding to the child standing in front of them: a child who said he no longer wanted to go, but the child who wanted to quit was not the same person who later wished he had continued.

And therein lies one of the most difficult realities of parenting.

The child experiences the present. The parent must also consider the future.

When Quitting Becomes a Habit

Another consideration that parents should not dismiss: the way a child responds to difficulty can become familiar. 

When something becomes uncomfortable, he leaves.  When progress slows, he searches for something else.  When the novelty disappears, he assumes the activity has nothing more to offer.

Repeated often enough, this response may become his ordinary way of approaching challenges… but the opposite can also happen.

A child who is repeatedly forced to continue activities that hold no meaning for him may learn to ignore his own interests and judgment.  He may become obedient without becoming committed.  He may learn to endure without learning to care.

Neither outcome is particularly desirable.

The purpose should not be to raise a child who never quits.  There are many things in life worth quitting.

The purpose should be to help a child distinguish between something that is genuinely wrong for him and something that has merely become difficult.

That distinction may take a great deal of time to understand.

A Question Worth Asking Before Allowing a Child to Leave

When a child announces that he wishes to stop Jiu-Jitsu, the immediate response is often to decide whether to permit it…but perhaps the decision is being made too quickly.

What if the child is simply experiencing a temporary period of frustration?

What if the next area of instruction is something he would love?

What if a change in class schedule would make the experience entirely different?

What if his discomfort arises from an insecurity that could gradually diminish through continued participation?

And what if leaving now deprives him of an environment that might become particularly important to him later in life?

These questions do not prove that he should stay, but they do suggest that the decision deserves more consideration.

The child's feelings matter, but feelings are not always reliable guides to what is ultimately beneficial.

The Question Beneath the Question

Perhaps the real question is not whether children should be allowed to quit Jiu-Jitsu.

Perhaps it is whether we understand what they are asking to give up.

A competent martial arts school offers more than physical activity. 

It offers a place where children can encounter difficulty in a controlled environment.

A place where they may discover capabilities they did not know they possessed.

Where they can learn to navigate physical confrontation without relying on and therefor becoming aggressive or extremely defensive to the world.

Where they can be surrounded by others who are attempting to improve.

Where the gentle child may discover strength without sacrificing his gentleness.

And where a child who struggles today may discover something tomorrow that changes the way he sees himself.

None of this means that every child must remain in Jiu-Jitsu.

It means that the decision to leave deserves the same seriousness as the decision to begin.

There are times when quitting is the right decision.

There are times when continuing is the right decision.

And there are times when a child needs an adult who can see beyond the discomfort of the present moment.  An adult who recognizes that the immediate relief of leaving may not always be the greatest kindness.  One who may consider discarding a brief period of aversion in the pursuit of who they may become later in life.

And sometimes, what a child needs most is not an escape from difficulty, but an environment in which he can discover that difficulty need not defeat him.