AIBU or is DH re. DS’s hobby

[CoffeeChocolateWine]

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?

I know this is off topic a bit - but why is it always a "hobby" on MN?

Way is everyone SO coy about naming the hobby?

What struck me was how pleased your DS was initially when his father started practising with him - time spent together, more than the actual sport. Now your DH is going to spoil that by pushing him to continue.

I wonder why your DH is so keen for your son to do this particular sport? I can understand why he might want him to find a sport that he likes and I suppose it would be more difficult if he seemed to have a real talent that he was "wasting" but in this case there seems no reason why he can't just take up another sport?

Is your DH a maths professor? No? Then at some point, possiby after only a lowly GCSE, he threw in the towel and 'quit' at maths. Is he fluent in six languages? Then, likewise, he's a linguistic quitter.

Or, did your DH try lots of different things over the course of his school career, find out which ones interested him, where his abilities lay and pursue those further? Oh. Well that sounds sensible.

I do understand his point that being allowed to give up too easily means that you don't try things out thoroughly enough to know whether you really like them - or whether you will gain some longer term benefit from doing them. The latter is trickier to assess at any point in time, as you may go though a phase of hating the activity but look back from a position of accomplishment and feel grateful that your parents kept pushing you on, so you could be where you are now e.g. able to play in a good team, orchestra etc. and enjoy the activity socially as an adult.

So there is a balance, between your sense as parents of whether this is something your DS is likely to gain more from in future, if he pushes through a rough patch, or whether it has run its course.

Focusing single-mindedly on the concept of 'quitting', outside that context, makes little sense though. Making dcs do things they hate is just as bad, or worse, than not giving them opportunities in the first place, by letting them give up before really finding out about things.

Obviously your DH is being unreasonable, but is he also maybe just worrying about losing some of the father/son time? You've said your DS is sporty, so could you suggest that DS and DH have a look and see if there is something else they both like the sound of doing (for example, my dad used to take both my little sisters to a Tae Kwon Do class that was open to all ages. None of them had ever done it before and I think he liked taking them and learning it with them etc.)

Who's hobby is it? Dh or ds ...

Perhaps you should suggest to your husband that he commit to volunteering with the team , that way he can maintain his involvement without your son .

I think your DH needs his own hobby to concentrate on. Not living his life through your sons hobby.
DH is BVVU, theres nothing wrong with leaving a hobby/ group/interest whatever. That's part and parcel of life getting fed up and then trying new things.

Crikey, if we were all still doing the hobbies we started in childhood I’d be a middle aged ballerina by now 😂

Will DH feel better about it if DS finds something else to try on a weekend (playing an instrument? Or a completely different physical activity, such as swimming) before quitting the old one?

It’s good to keep kids off their screens as much as possible, maybe DH’s good intent is getting swallowed up by his own frustration (does he regret quitting a hobby as a kid? Or did he want to do something his parents couldn’t facilitate? Might be some baggage for DH to unpack here).

YANBU.

I’ve played a sport on and off all my life.

All the time at school.
Not at all during university and early working years.
For the last 6 years I’ve been playing with a team and have just QUIT to focus on something else that I’m enjoying more at the moment.
I can go back to the sport if I feel like it later.

I considered my decision over a period of timed then let the captain know at the start of the last season and played through all our commitments. That’s the sensible way to quit. Like your son is.

He can always go back to the sport. He is 10 and should be trying lots of things. Hobbies are meant to be fun.

I don’t agree with letting children drop things all the time, but a considered decision and finishing the season is very acceptable.

I gave both my children every opportunity to take up hobbies they were interested in but they always seemed to lose enthusiasm and give up. With my older daughter, my OH said "oh leave her, if she doesn't want to do it don't make her" and he let her give up whenever she wanted. With my younger daughter, I persevered and made her stick with hobbies for a good amount of time. Unfortunately, she gave up most things also.

If they are not enjoying something it is silly to make them take part. It is great that you gave your DS the opportunity and that his dad showed so much support, but it is time for your DH to stop living through his son

I think most children should finish what they start ie if you pay for a term of swimming lessons they don't stop after week 3. However, after 5 years he's done enough if it's not fun. Infact it sounds like he would like to have stopped last year. Try something new, 10 is a good age to still be trying new sorts etc. Tell your husband to pack in the 'quitter ' talk, what good does that do. Is he one of those dad's who think their son is the next Alan Shearer (met so many, all annoying).

My DF did the whole 'you're not stopping now you've come so far' routine with me. He too counteracted my growing disinterest with extra hours of practice and more evening/weekend commitments.

Now that I can look at those years subjectively, I realise that it wasn't anything to do with 'being a quitter', he just enjoyed it too much himself and was being selfish.

Because I wanted to please him, I allowed this hobby to consume my spare time for 10 years. Almost all of my childhood and adolescent memories are rooted in it, and it's hard not to be resentful of that fact.

It sounds like you're going to hold your ground with your DH, and I'm so glad for your DS.

You wonder what he thinks, did he imagine that his boy was going to be the next Pogba/Murray/whoever? Surely it becomes clear after a year or two whether a kid has the talent and the interest to get to a level in a sport where they could play it professionally, and if not, what's the aim of playing? Other than the fun and the exercise, I would say you're looking to get to the level of proficiency where you could drop it for a few years and go back as an adult and you wouldn't need any extra coaching or whatever to go and play in an adult team.

Imagine you had to stick with every shit thing you ever tried. Imagine what majorette and tapdance legends we (I'm talking to the over 40s mumsnet contingent here probably) would be!

Jeez - if David Beckham can accept that his sons have no interest......

Hobby hobby hobby.

Is it football or rugby OP? I'm betting football.

In this situation I would tell my son he needed to stay until the end of the season so as not to let the team (especially the coach) down. That's very important IMO.

What conditions exist that DH would allow DS to quit? It sounds like he’s saying NO QUITTING under any circumstances.

Having kept working after his passion has been exhausted DS seems to have tried genuinely hard. Will DH ever allow him to stop? What kind of lesson is “keep going forever”?

I think he’s going to far in the other direction from his lax childhood. Would he be receptive to this point of view?

It was a revelation to me in my mid-thirties that I could actually just QUIT things if I wanted to, and it didn't make me a bad person

All those years of never quitting anything ... even if it made me miserable ...

Sorry OP, obvs this thread is about your son and your husband, not me! - but you don't want your son to be like I was, trust me!

Your oh is being unreasonable. A long time ago I had a neighbourwho as a child /young person had been a competitive swimmer, but at county level, not national, he had had trials for national squads but never quite made it. It was a huge disappointment in his life and he often talked about swimmers he knew who had made the grade. His daughters were taken swimming from toddler hood and were really good, particularly the oldest. He coached them, they went to coaching with specialist coaches in a swimming club, they drove all over the country to competitions and they were getting "known" on the circuit.

Then puberty/teen years hit and she said she was tired of going training almost every day at 7.00, wanted to see her friends at the weekends not spend most of it sitting in a car on the motorway and what was more she wasn't enjoying the swimming. He was devastated, but she was adamant and refused to even swim for fun.

The moral is you can't use your kids to fulfil your dreams and if you push them too far you risk taking the pleasure out of their skill so they can't even enjoy it as a hobby any more. Sportspeople who achieve at the highest level are not like the rest of us, they have a different mindset, for most of us the taking part , the social side and the physical enjoyment of a sport is enough, please don't let your OH push away the pleasure that your child might get from his sport by demanding that he push himself beyond his natural ability.

I'd like to see how many things your husband can say he has done for half his life! that are purely for hobby purposes

When ds3 was a teenager he went through a number of hobbies/sports, and didn't stick with any of them. I did worry that letting him give up one thing after another would send him the wrong message, but decided, as you have, @CoffeeChocolateWine, that it was wrong to make him carry on doing a hobby that he wasn't enjoying - as you say, hobbies are supposed to be fun.

When he was about 16, a friend asked him to go along to hockey - the friend's dad was coaching the local team, and the friend thought ds3 might enjoy it - he did, and he stuck with it until he went to university - he even got good enough to transfer to a much bigger team, where he played for the Mens 3rds, and even the 2nds on occasion.

He only dropped it when he went to University because he found that the University team was far more about drinking to excess and some pretty unpleasant behaviour than about the hockey. He still enjoys the game, and may take it up again in the future.

Which is all a very long-winded way of saying that I think your attitude is right, and your dh (with the best motivations, I am sure) is being unreasonable.

Just chiming in to say (like everyone else) he is not quitting.

He is:

Developing
Changing
Evolving
Outgrowing

My dd loves dancing - has since she was tiny. But her joy in it comes and goes (usually teacher dependent) and so I let her commitment change each term to suit her. She’s been down to two classes a week and right now she’s loving it and just increased her commitment to five days a week. Giving up doesn’t have to be completely or forever - it’s about what’s right for your child right now, and that may well change.

Let him stop if he wants to. My DS learned a musical instrument for many years and then got bored so he stopped. When he was about 14 he realised he missed it and resumed lessons with a new enthusiasm. If we had forced him to carry on against his will he would have probably started to hate it.

It seems very strange to expect a five-year-old to decide what his "passion" in life (or the athletic hobby side of it, at least) will be-- and to demand that he should stay with it for... how long? Five years seems like a fair length of time and definitely not "quitter" territory. How much longer would your son have to keep doing this sport that he no longer really enjoys all that much before he'd be allowed to stop? What would be the criteria that would make it not "quitting", but just moving on to something different?

I'd present it to your husband this way: Youth is meant to be a time for trying out lots of different things and finding out which ones you love not staying with one thing because it happened to be the first one you tried, so you're stuck with it for life. Five years is a decent chunk of time especially for a child of that age! Seriously, would your husband honestly spend five years doing a hobby himself that he had grown bored of? I doubt it!

Also, if your son doesn't have unusual talent in the current sport, he might even do better in the new one-- and if he'll look forward to it and have fun, that's the most important part.

YANBU.