Forcing DS to continue with his training?

[TheGuineaHole]

DS is 11 and has been doing karate for around 3 years. He has dyspraxia so progress has been slow but he has managed to grade up to green belt and is about to take his blue.

Problem is, he no longer enjoys it and wants to quit. I've noticed in the past few months his progress has pretty much stopped altogether. He's yawning all through classes and shows zero interest. He makes excuses as to why he can't go (tired, feels sick, has homework etc) and I know he just doesn't want to do it anymore.

But I feel it's such a shame. He's come so far and as he's such a target for bullies, I worry that once he gives up karate, he will be even more vunerable to bullying when he starts secondary school.

Plus, what else is he going to do with his time? sit at home on the PC all night probably.

So my dilema is, do I carry on making him go, paying out £8 a week for something which he doesn't even want to do or let him quit and save the money?

Let him quit. IMO there is nothing to be gained from making a child do an activity when they don't have any interest in it. It's obviously been a few months that he's been hating it, not even weeks, so it's not as if it's worth waiting and seeing!

Why don't you say he can quit but choose another activity?

Even if it's just you going for a swim together or something. Just make it clear you'd want to replace it with something else.

Also I don't think it has to be either activity, or sitting at home on the PC! You could say ok to no activity but that there is no PC time that evening, that he should spend that time doing something else.

How about changing to something else and maybe give him a choice in what to change to. With the proviso of sticking at it for at laest two terms.

is there no middle ground between letting him stop and 'forcing' him?

I had this idealistic notion that my children could direct their own interests and leisure activities, with perhaps nothing more than gentle loving encouragement, only for at least one of them to turn round and demand to know why I didn't push them to keep up with their violin/extra languages/dance whatever

we can't really win

We discuss every summer what activities they want to continue for the following year and if there is anything they want to change. This works really well. I always use delaying tactics if they suddenly say they don't want to go anymore (We'll talk about it after Easter etc) and by then they have usually forgotten that they wanted to stop.

In your circumstances it sounds like he really has had enough. So the questions I would ask is, "Why are you fed up with karate at the moment?" Have a chat about it and then ask, "Well, what would you like to do instead?" followed by some suggestions. I suspect DS1 is dyspraxic and one activity that I would imagine helps with coordination and strength is climbing. And actually he's quite good at that and really enjoys it.

My DCs understand pretty well now that dropping something means doing something else and that it will involve a discussion about exactly what it is they don't like and some options as to how to improve it before we swap to something else.