Should I let him quit?

[rockandroll]

My son has been doing karate since he was 7. He's now 14 and has been training religiously for all those years.

Anyway he has just got in with a new group of friends who have decided that karate is "Camp" and "geeky" and so son has decided to quit.

I'm fuming and have so far refused to allow this to happen. He seems to think that hanging around street corners with his "friends" will be more fun. I KNOW he will regret giving it up and I honestly don't think we should allow him to.

Any thoughts would be apreciated.

I think you should respect his pov. BUT I wouldn't necessarily allow it to be replaced by hanging about with friends. If you said "Ok but on that night you're doing x instead" bet he wouldn't be so keen to give it up.

Tell him these new pals of his are probably sh*tting themselves incase he decides to practise on them, which I think he should....

I would do everything in my power to keep him at the karate. You are right, he will regret it in the future if he gives it up. These friends sound as if they are jealous of him and trying to bring him down to their level. I would not be happy about their influence to be honest. Hanging round street corners is not the route you want him to go down.

He is 14 - they are very easily led at this age, and getting into bad company is what 14 year old boys do best if their parents are not on the ball and keeping very close tabs on what they are up to.

Can you get his karate teacher to talk to him? - Not in an obvious way that makes it apparant that you have interfered? Believe me, his karate teacher is a FAR better role model than these so called friends.

I have an 18 - (nearly 19) year old ds and a 16 yearold ds and I have been through some very tough times, believe me.

Trust your gut feeling - it is nearly always right. What else do these new friends want from him?

I would try a combination of agreeing to respect his choice, whilst asking him to carry on for, say, four more weeks (or whatever is paid for in advance) in order to make well thought out decision.

And also on condition that he does something else you and he can agree on - not hanging out on street corners, as WWW says.

TBH, at 14 I wanted to give up just about anything I'd been doing since I was 7 - just because I had been doing them 'as a child' (which clearly I no longer was ). I did that with piano, and being forced to carry on, with the same teacher, in the same way, would not have helped. Being listened to and helped to find a positive way to make some sort of change - maybe a different teacher, or jazz instead of classical, or a different instrument - would have worked a lot better, for me.

Totally understand your feelings though, if its coming from the friends and not from him, IYKWIM.

How is being able to kick the shit out of someone who starts on you camp and geeky?

I could understand his pov if this was a realisation he had come to by himself, since he's at the stage of making these choices and exerting a bit of independence. But I take the pp's point about then filling his time with something else.

But like you I'd be concerned that his streetcorner friends have so much sway over him. From a pack mentality it will give them a sense of power that they've manipulated him & he will be perceived as 'weaker' in their eyes. And for your pov what else will they persuade him to do?

Is there any way of explaining this to him?

I am very surprised that 14yr boys would find karate 'camp and geeky'

I would echo the suggestion of saying you have paid up to xxx and he has to carry on until then (you may not be able to do this if he knows it's not true of course). Or you could ask him what he thinks? If he has been doing it this long surely he doesn't think it is camp and geeky and if so he needs to be standing by his own opinions not the ones of his 'new friends' who sound like tossers btw