When Your Kid Doesn't Want to Do a Thing

Do you make them? Or let them bow out?

On Tuesday afternoon, while I was at my kids’ school helping out with an event, my cell phone rang. It was my 11-year-old, calling from his TickTalk watch, who was home with our babysitter and in tears. Why? He didn’t want to go to soccer practice.

My 11-year-old loves soccer. It’s his passion, and his team have had a great season. (Those of you who’ve read my book may remember that past seasons were …. not so stellar, so it’s been really fun to watch them improve.) They practice twice a week, and on Tuesdays, they have a trainer run drills. My son doesn’t like drills. I mean, who does? Drills can be exhausting, repetitive, and boring, but they exist for a reason. They improve skills.

When my son called me begging me to let him stay home, a lot of things went through my mind. I knew he was probably tired from Halloween festivities the night before. StilI, I could tell, from what he was telling me, that the key reason he wanted to stay home was that he didn’t like drills. Yet I also knew that, although he sometimes moaned about these trainer practices in advance, he always came home afterwards energized and in a good mood.

In that moment, I was also reminded of a text I’d gotten from a friend a few weeks ago. His 12-year-old had signed up to attend a Hebrew school field trip, and on the day of, he announced that he didn’t want to go anymore. The kid’s rationale: He didn’t want to endure the 1.5-hour-long bus ride and didn’t like that the trip got back late (10:30pm). In his text to me, the dad asked whether I thought he should make his son go, or whether he should relent and let his son stay home.

Before I delve into how I think about these kinds of situations, I want to emphasize that there is no “one right approach.” How you respond depends on you, your kid, your values, the specifics of the activity, the reasons they don’t want to go, and more. Still, I thought it might be helpful to break down the five key issues I consider when deciding how to respond to my kids’ pleas of Can I just stay home???, so here goes.