Interested in getting some perspectives on this. Our DS is 10. Since the age of 5 he has been taking part in a sport as a hobby. It involves training on a Saturday and a competitive match on a Sunday during the season. For 5 years he has shown quite admirable commitment to this but over the past year or so he has been losing enthusiasm for it. I should also add that I wouldn’t say he is hugely talented at it...he’s decent and he gets enjoyment from it and likes the social side of it. However, we’ve noticed that he doesn’t always want to go to his training or he’s not putting enough effort into the competitions. He’s lost the passion for it and he admitted this to us about a year ago.
DH’s response to this was that he needed to spend even more time doing it, to practice more and to reignite the passion. So he started practising with DS in the garden and at the park at whatever opportunity they could get. Initially I was pretty supportive of this and DS was enjoying spending that time with his Dad, sometimes his performance in his hobby would improve a bit but it was very up and down, but it was still very clear that the passion for it had gone.
DH has been getting frustrated by it in recent months (he’s taken to taking DS to pretty much all of the training and matches whereas we used to take it in turns). He often comes back annoyed that DS has not put enough effort it and hasn’t done very well. Two weeks ago he ended up having a bit of a go at him about it that he (DH) is putting a lot of his own time into practising with him and supporting him but DS doesn’t put the effort in.
It ended up with DS admitting that he want to stop his hobby. I told him that if ha’s what he wants to do then that’s ok, after all hobbies are meant to be fun and something you really love doing. I also said that it would give us an opportunity to try something new and find something that he does feel passionate about. He seemed up for this and we talked about some things that he might like to try. DH however was very quiet. He later said to me that I gave him a very negative message that ‘quitting is ok’ and keeps saying “I’m not having a quitter for a son”. He’s now talking more and more about spending even more time doing this hobby! This seems ridiculous to me. He’s 10 years old and has been committed to his hobby for 5 years. Now he wants to try something new because he’s decided that the sport he discovered at the age of 5 isn’t his passion. I’m getting frustrated with DH’s attitude because I feel that by spending all his time doing a hobby that he’s not passionate about, we’re holding him back from finding the thing he is passionate about! But DH has got a bee in his bonnet about him being a quitter.
Who is being unreasonable?