Revisit: Is It Okay To Quit?

I'm Dr. Becky and this is Good Inside.

I made a choice about how to handle this. Not sure it was the right choice. And it's one of the things I'd love to talk to you about, which is, you know, kind of the broader question of when do you let your kid quit something?

So when I think about this topic of quitting, of stopping something after you've.

Started it, so many things come to mind.

I think about sports, I think about certain activities, I think about friendships. And recently I was talking with a parent who brought to me their child's sleepaway camp struggles.

Dear Mommy and Daddy, I hate it here. I've not made any friends, but I've tried. And if you have even a little love in your heart for me, please come and pick me up.

We'll be right back after this. I'm Dr. Becky and this is Good inside. I'm a clinical psychologist. I'm a mom of three and I'm on a mission to rethink the way we raise our children. So I recently spoke to a mom who was dealing with sleepaway camp troubles. In this mom's town, many of the kids go away for part of the summer where they're with other kids, where they're seemingly going to have fun, to enjoy activities and to foster their own sense of independence. But what about when your kid writes you a letter saying they're not experiencing any of those benefits of sleepaway camp, that they actually are having a miserable.

Time and want to come home?

So Dr. Becky this week and I went to kind of an end of season barbecue and no kids were allowed. And so as the evening kind of went on, people started pulling out their phones and reading letters that they had gotten from their kids at camp. They were really funny, they were kind of exactly what you'd expect. And I couldn't share mine. I sent my 10 year old daughter to sleepaway camp for the first time this summer. And the letters I got home were not anything like the letters that my friends were reading around the table. I asked my daughter if I could read it to you and she said she wanted to read it to you herself. So this is an example of a letter I got from my 10 year old.

Dear Mommy and Daddy, I hate it here. I've not made any friends, but I've tried. I really, really tried for you. But they just don't like me. I can never sleep here. Last night I was up till 5:30 for the fifth night in a row. I'm having dreams where you guys come in and Tell me that you hate me and have to stay here for the rest of my life. The food is so gross. One girl even found a dead larva in her broccoli. And my body doesn't work the way it normally does. I'm also getting really pale. You have to take me home. Swallowing hurts a lot. And I really hate my life. Please don't think I'm being a drama queen, because this is the truth. And if you have even a little love in your heart for me, please come and pick me up.

So this is the kind of toned down letter I started getting an outpouring every day of very dramatic emails. My daughter was going to drama camp. She loves theater, musical theater especially. I didn't see camp, sleepaway camp as punishment. I also didn't go to sleep away camp as a kid. It was not a thing that everyone I knew did. Where we live now, everyone goes to sleepaway camp. All her friends are at camp, not the camp she went to, but they're all at camp. I made a choice about how to handle this. I'm not sure it was the right choice. And it's one of the things I'd love to talk to you about, which is kind of the broader question of when do you let your kid quit something?

Well, I mean, first of all, my heart, like, sank reading, like, hearing that letter. And it also, like, really, really hits home because literally in my walk over here, I was talking to my husband about sleepaway camp options for my daughter, who is saying she might want to go next year, and who is just very particular about the types of people she feels comfortable with, and also can often interpret ambiguous social stimuli as hurtful or as excluding. And so while my older son is at sleepaway now, and I really don't worry about him because I feel like his favorite activity is making new friends. Like, when I heard your daughter's letter, I was thinking, like, so much of my daughter. So first of all, I guess just like, what's going on for you about this? What happened when you read this letter? You have so much information about her. And the information around how you reacted to this also really matters. So let's start there.

It was really hard to get these notes. It was actually really hard for me to be separated from her. I mean, when we dropped her off, she got out of the car willingly, but I wasn't actually sure if she would get out of the car and how I would behave. Like, I wasn't gonna shove her out, you know? So it was like there was this dance when we dropped her off of I don't actually know if you're going to camp because about a month before camp she started coming up with reasons that she shouldn't go. And I finally said, which the camp told me not to. I finally said, look, give it a week. If you really don't like it, let's have a conversation about it. But like, give it a week and go and really try. And my daughter makes friends pretty easily. She's pretty outgoing, but once she decides she's not going to like something, you know, there's like no changing her mind. She played travel soccer all last season and really hated it. Even though she was the one who was insistent I didn't want her to play travel soccer. She just is very competitive and she wanted to try out for the team. And when she made it, of course she was playing, you know, but in that case, I was like, look, you tried out for the team, you made the team, you have to stick with it. You got to play the season, they're counting on you. This is what we're doing. You don't want to play next season, fine. Camp. I felt a little bit different about. And my husband wasn't bearing the brunt of a lot of this. Like, the calls were all directed at me. And because I had said, if you really hate it, we'll have a conversation. She took that as, you're gonna pick me up and you're a liar if you don't pick me up. So when she started calling me, you know, I'd pick up the phone and it would be, why don't you love me? Why did you lie to me? I mean, I would have very calm chats with her on the phone. I asked to talk to the counselor, I asked to talk to the head of the girls camp. I'm like, look, she needs a friend and she needs activities that she really wants to get out of bed for every day. It can't be that she's locking herself in the bathroom at 5:30 and crying. I tried to be an advocate for her for four or five days over a long weekend, but, you know, they kept saying, it's fine, it's fine, this is normal. This is just typical homesickness. Please don't take her home. And so at a certain point I'm like, do I listen to the people who deal with this all the time and see this all the time, or do I listen to my kid who's desperate to come home, who's just miserable?

So I mean, this, this whole situation can be applied to so many other things in life. But there is something about sleepaway camp where I feel like there's this assumed success if, like, a kid stays. Like, there's some preferable outcome and some failure if they leave. And again, this happened to be a personal topic because sleepaway camp was not for me. And I'm someone. I would describe myself as like, a pretty confident, social, independent person. And looking back on the years I went, and then finally the year I said, like, this is my last year, like, I would have been fine without going to sleep boy camp. I would have separated. I would have gone to college. I would have done other things. But being separate from your parents when you don't feel like essentially emotionally safe or secure is, like a very, very different thing than staying on a team when you have, like, the safety and security of your parents and home to come home to every single day after practice. Right. And your kid is 10, like, that's still really young. Arguably, even when people are 16 and 19 and 30, if they don't feel like they have a secure base to come home to, doing something uncomfortable is just scary and not exciting. And so I guess, first things first. I think it's important to throw to the side the idea that there's any one outcome that's, like, better or morally superior or superior from, like, a character building perspective. And as a mom of a daughter, just like you, sometimes I think the most important thing for my daughter to learn early in life is, like, there's a time when I'm allowed to say, no, stop, I don't want to do this anymore. And, like, those words can be listened to. Right?

And.

So, so what next? I mean, I really don't think there's one right outcome. I guess I would say, like, I really understand, you know, the choice to take a kid out of camp. And I think, especially if you live in certain towns, like, you feel like there's like, a shame in that, you know, or you go to the barbecue and everyone's like, my kid loves camp. And you're like, oh, God, like, did I do something wrong or something wrong with my kid? And I'm guessing there's a part of your daughter always in life that it sounds like kind of who she is and is, like, not terribly concerned with, like, doing things the way that everyone else does things. I don't know.

Is that, oh, 100% right?

I'm guessing you love that about her.

Yeah, I mean, she did say to me the other day, she's like, mom, am I the Only person who can't make it at sleepaway camp. And I was like, no. But I didn't have other examples of people who didn't make it.

What do you think she's really asking there?

Is there something broken about me or is there a reason? You know, she has a lot of anxiety around people not liking her. And I'm always like, you know, half of someone liking you is you liking them first. Which does not always apply as a grownup. But I do feel like we're kind of predisposed to like someone if they get off an energy that they're interested and curious about you. And you're like, okay, I can give you, like, the benefit of the doubt if you're curious about me.

Well, I think, you know, what's coming to mind for me right now is I think especially women, girls early on, in some ways, I don't know if we're predetermined to or we just have so much early wiring to gaze out first instead of gaze in first. What does this person think of me? What are the expectations of everyone else of me? And even that idea of, am I the only one who couldn't make it at camp? It's just interesting to me, the wording choice versus am I the only one who felt like camp wasn't right for me? That's actually a very different way of phrasing it in my mind. Much more empowered. Or does that person like me versus do I like that person? Do I want to be close with that person? In what way do I want to have a friendship with that person? I think about this a lot with adults I used to see in my private practice, and especially these young women on these dating apps. And so many of them were like, oh, does he like me? Does he like me? Is he going to text me back? There wasn't any data to suggest that this person was, like, likable to my client. Like, they didn't seem particularly compelling. They weren't treating them so well. They were mostly ghosting them like I was. And I remember asking, like, do you like. Do you like him? And they were like, I don't even know. I don't even know how to answer that question. Like, what do you mean? You know, it was, like, so foreign. So I think. I think one of the most liberating things as a parent is to remind myself, like, I don't have to put so much pressure on any individual decision. If instead I become a little bit more focused or invested in, like, the process under the decision. So Instead of, are you staying or are you not staying? And I don't know how much contact you had, and I'm not even sure what decision you ended up making. But believing her, like, that seemed really, really evident in her letter. Like, she was kind of saying, like, do you believe me? And believing is a really, I think, interesting thing between kids and parents, because I believe we're all just desperate to be believed and to, like, feel seen in that way. And that's such a basic human need that all of us, kids and adults, will always escalate our expression of our experience if we don't feel the original experience was seen or believed in the intensity we felt it. And so some people might call that dramatic or manipulative or making a bigger deal out of something than it is. I think that's the least generous interpretation. I think the most generous interpretation is, oh, the person didn't get the very real relational experience they needed. It doesn't mean anyone's a bad person on the other end. But that need to feel believed and feel seen is so great that I will do anything in the service of that experience. So saying to your daughter, I believe you. Like, I believe you that you're up early. I believe you that you're crying. I believe you that this feels really, really bad. And if this was a real time conversation, a lot of kids will say right away, okay, so. So you're gonna pick me up, right? And sometimes it's not such a dire moment. It's like, okay, so you're gonna let me watch another TV show, you know, and you have the opportunity to really differentiate those two things, which I think is really important, which is, whoa, whoa. I'm actually not talking about the decision yet about leaving. I'm not talking about the decision yet about whether I'm gonna let you watch another TV show. What I'm saying, and I want you to really hear this is, I believe you that this is as bad as you said. I believe you that you really want to watch a TV show and really, like, siloing. That at first, I think, is what all of us at any age, like, really, really need. And then it also helps both people clarify, like, how much of this decision is actually just about feeling seen and how much after we have felt seen in that way is actually really about this individual decision.

So I brought her home. I think what you're saying about believing is really, like, spot on. I don't think I articulated it quite that way, but for her, it felt like, I don't want that Legacy of. I want to build trust with you, and I want you to feel like when you say, I need help, that I am. I'm there for you.

I mean, that. That. That hit home with me too, as you said that. I see it hit home with you as you're talking. And I. I think that we all do this thing as parents. Like, I. I call it like, the fast forward error. But, like, we have a situation where our kid is struggling today, then we fast forward some amount of time. Like, sometimes it's as short as three months, but sometimes it's like 30 years. Like, it's anywhere in between. And in this case, you're like, I need to have a kid who goes to college. Like, she has to learn how to cope with things and go to college. And so we somehow back into. And so, like, I'm gonna write back, like, hey, it's not that bad. Like, deal with it. I'm actually responding to my fear that my kid's not gonna go to college. I'm really not responding to the fact that my kid is having a hard time at 10 years old in sleepaway camp. And I think. I know I do this. We think we all do this, where we respond to our kid based on our anxiety and fear, not based on the information in front of us. And when we do that, like, we just missed out on a million things. I think, number one, we miss out on the opportunity to build a child's skills for later in life. Right? Because when you act that way, you just layer on your own anxiety to your kid. That's never helped a kid. And I feel like what's often missed also is, like, the trust in yourself. Like, I feel like this about my daughter. Like, she's seven, and things can be a little trickier for her than at least my older son. And, like, something I really trust is, like, I trust my ability to, like, parent her like I do. And, like, I don't know exactly what outcome that will lead to. You know, maybe a bunch of things will always be harder for her. But I trust that in her childhood years, I mean, and beyond, like, we'll build skills together. Like, we'll go through important experiences together, and that's gonna really help her. And when I fast forward, in her case from like, 7 to 30 or your daughter's from 10 to 18, like, you miss out this period of time where you could tell yourself, like, I have eight years till she goes to college. Like, I trust myself. I trust her. I trust development. I trust our relationship. Like, I trust that we'll be able to do a lot in those years so that at 18, she's not in the same place, you know, as age 10. And whenever I say that to myself, I find. I find I give myself, like, a lot more freedom to make the best decision in the moment, not the decision that kind of temporarily quells my fears about the future. And, I mean, for what it's worth, and I don't know how much it's worth because I really don't think there's ever, like, a right way. Like, I would have made the same. I would have made the same decision.

Thank you for this. I needed the validation. I needed to feel like, yeah, I made the right choice. So we're just maybe not right. I don't know. There was a right or a wrong choice here, but there was a choice I could. I could live with, and I think this was the one.

It sounds like the right choice, like, for you to make. You know, that's the right we have. And there's so much the two of you I'm sure will talk about related to this. And, you know, there's such an opportunity. I'm just thinking about this now that I'm saying it. Like, there's such an opportunity for the two of you to, like, build skills around what happens. Because you have a relationship that feels safe to her. Right? Like, we always have to feel safe with someone to be influenced by them, to talk more to them, to tell them more, to take in more. You have to have that safety. And so hearing what you said, like, I just can picture maybe that moment that I don't want to have. I don't want to have. Encoded in her memory is like, I really reached out for help to my mom. I was feeling awful, and I was left alone. That, like, builds the opposite of safety. That builds fear, like, within our closest attachment relationship. So the fact that you prioritize that safety, I think says a lot about, you know, how the two of you will be able to build from this.

So I want to end with some general takeaways. Not about sleepaway camp, but about the topic of sticking things out versus stopping first. Believing your kid. Believing your kid actually isn't always the same thing as making a certain decision based on that. Believing in this conversation, believing that your child was miserable was aligned with the decision of taking that child home. But believing can also look like saying, I believe you, that you don't want.

To go to school.

I know that that's real. I also know we're going to get through it. 2. Being brave doesn't always mean sticking something out. Get to know what's really happening with your kid and trust that being brave can mean sticking something out, and it can also mean stopping and leaving. 3. There's nothing more powerful than our alliance with our kids, especially as our kids get older. Remembering that our connection with them is really the only strategy we have reminds us to pause, listen and believe their experience. Thanks for listening. To share a story or ask me a question, go to goodinside.com podcast. You could also write me@podcastoodinside.com Parenting is the hardest and most important job in the world and parents deserve resources and support so they feel empowered, confident and connected. I'm so excited to share Good Inside Membership, the first platform that brings together content and experts you trust with a global community of like valued parents. It's totally game changing and if you're looking for a smaller next step, go to goodinside.com to sign up for my free weekly email that's always filled with practical, actionable strategies and scripts. You don't want to miss it. Good inside with Dr. Becky is produced by Jesse Baker and Eric Newsom at Magnificent Noise. Our production staff includes Sabrina Farhee, Julia Natt and Kristen Muller. I would also like to thank Erica Belsky, Mary Panico, Jill Cromwell Wang, Ashley Valenzuela and the rest of the Good Inside team. And one last thing before I let you go. Let's end by placing our hands on our hearts and reminding ourselves even as I struggle and even as I have a hard time on the outside, I remain Good Inside.