A father to a five year old: don’t quit on a bad day
My eldest told me he wanted to quit going to football training. “When something feels hard, the mind and body resist because they seek comfort”.
I was taken aback a few weeks ago when my oldest son Lorenzo, who is 5, told me he didn't want to play soccer anymore. Quitting soccer per se isn’t what worries me — it’s what was behind the sudden change of mind.
I played soccer from the age of six until 37, a little over four years ago, when I had to stop because of a foot injury. Even so, I never pushed Lorenzo to play (at least, not consciously). I’m not some kind of madman who unwittingly projects his dreams onto his kids.
For Lorenzo’s age, I see the sport as something playful, for him to exercise and also to learn. I don’t have any pretensions about his trajectory or competitive skills. I have disagreed with a mother who told me perhaps the kids should be doing more technical exercises — no, because they’re kids. They need to have fun and simply to play. They’re learning, and developing.
The delicate part is finding the balance between the playful bit — that Lorenzo has fun, with no pressure — and in not giving in to all of his whims and agreeing to anything that may threaten his wellbeing, as if he were made out of glass. It’s hard to know where there is a whim — or a hardship which is worth confronting — and where there is a request borne out of a real need.
The Land of Diego and Lionel
It was after his visit to my home country of Argentina, in spring of 2023, when Lorenzo started loving soccer. It’s an inescapable consequence of having been in Buenos Aires when it was still in the clutch of the World Cup fever of 2022 in Qatar. For hours, Lorenzo was kicking the ball about with his cousins. Since I come from a large family there, he received several soccer shirts — both from Boca and River, the two archrival soccer teams in Buenos Aires, and the Argentine national team.
Back in Greece, where we live, for weeks Lorenzo kept asking me to join a soccer club. I pointed out that none of his friends played soccer — at a time when he seemed to exclusively want to do afternoon activities if one of his friends were there. “I don’t care,” he said, in that way he does when he really wants something.
Beginning in September, Lorenzo went to official soccer training enthusiastically, for months. I saw him improving, having fun, getting frustrated, and learning.
Lorenzo didn’t only make progress with the ball and some physical coordination — his strength is in defense, which must be down to pure family genes — but he also took in what I was also more into: the group dynamic, and in slowly learning how be part of a team — saving, defending, attacking — and he learned that rules are the same for everyone (you can’t touch the ball with your hands).
And it helped Lorenzo to actually speak Greek. Suddenly, his fourth language was on a par with his other three languages which he used with ease (Spanish with me, Italian with his mother Irene, and English since he started kindergarten three years ago).
How is it that often things will often be running at cruise control, and suddenly something switches to the point where Lorenzo rejects it. Some weeks ago it was about not wanting to go to kindergarten anymore), and now he wanted to quit football practice. Why? Was this going to be some kind of pattern for him, abandoning hobbies or duties due to a setback or sudden lack of enthusiasm?
Why I don’t want him to be a quitter
I want Lorenzo to persevere. I don’t want him to give up when he feels bored, or something loses its initial luster. Of course it is hard to motivate yourself to head to training when it’s raining, or windy, or cold. But often the more tempting option is not the most convenient.
How do you help a privileged, capable child learn that to do well for oneself, you need consistency, perseverance, tenacity, patience, frustration, persistence and insistence? How did my parents manage to teach seven children of these values?
I dug deep, in an attempt to decipher why it was important for me that Lorenzo kept on at it, but above all, to understand what was happening to him, to see how I could be of the most help.
I remembered the conversations where Lorenzo told me soccer was his “favorite”, and that he liked his teammates (and expressed a wish to see some of them even on non-soccer days). In fact, he wanted to play soccer every day, either at home or in a square. At some point, he decided he didn’t want to train anymore, but just wanted to play in the matches.
A breather
A combination of factors meant we missed two training sessions and had a canceled match at the weekend. Lorenzo had a cold, with a sore throat and a cough, the weather wasn’t nice, and, as parents, we could feel the threat creeping up on us every time there is some kind of virus doing the rounds. We saw Lorenzo was tired, and so he spent his days at home.
That week, Irene showed me a post on Instagram with a quote from Olympic gold winner Olympian Nastia Liukin: “Never quit on a bad day”, said the U.S. former gymnast.
It’s a reminder that it’s best to sleep on decisions taken in the moment, or when things are tough. A break is always a good idea, taking a step backwards, reconsidering, and making a decision once you’d had more time to think.
“By adopting this mindset, we can help normalize struggle and honor our child’s choice if they want to try something else,” the post on the quote said, inciting a flurry of unrelated comments and debate.
The idea is to listen and explain that of course you can quit, but not today, the post goes on: “We all have bad days when we want to quit. When something feels hard, our brain and body resist because they want us to be comfortable.”
The idea is that a child can decide to be done with something, but should do it on a good day. It’s a way of normalizing struggle, which builds resilience, according to the athlete.
I understood that Lorenzo wanted to quit at the slightest difficulty or sign of failure. What would be the failure if he was patted on the back in all of his training sessions, and that I saw that, as well as having fun, he was making progress?
Of course this is an adult perspective. The context for him, who is barely five, who is younger than most of the boys on the team (who are six and even seven), and who have been training for two or three years.
An attempt
I told Lorenzo we needed to go and tell Angelos and Daniela, the trainers, that he was done with training.
I had spoken to Angelos already, who hadn’t spotted anything odd in particular about it all, but noted that something similar had happened with other boys, who only wanted to do the soccer match without the 30 or 40 minutes of recreational training, with or without the ball, that came before it.
He told me that it was important to help the children understand that practice was necessary to learn and improve, and that’s how they’d have more fun later down the line.
So off we went. Lorenzo was enthused throughout the session, with the same energy as ever, weaving from one side of the soccer field to the other, laughing with his teammates. When the session was over, he asked if he could stay a bit longer. And when we were finally about to leave, I asked him if he wanted us to go to reception and let them know we’d not be coming back.
He was quiet: “Yes, I don’t want to come to soccer anymore… actually…..what am I saying! I do want to keep coming!” And he laughed.
I was never forced to do any sport. In fact, it was something I wanted to do — I suppose due to the crowd I hung out with at school. My experience was also the opposite — my parents only came once to see me playing football, in my early adolescent years. And never again. (I’d guess having seven kids didn’t help).
And when I went to my first try-outs for a club at 15, it was my first girlfriend’s father, who was soccer-crazy, who came to see me. My parents didn’t care, or even really like soccer (as with anything which could be a distraction from a respectable university education).
I got in at Platense soccer club and trained for a month only. It was too far to get to, and I couldn’t keep doing it alone. My parents would simply question me about it instead, and didn’t give me the money for the two public transport connections I needed to take to get to the stadium (let’s say they defunded me, and my appetite for soccer wasn’t so big either — nor my talent, evidently….)
It’s different then, that I’ll go anywhere with Lorenzo, whether it’s training for soccer or whatever. I’d do what I would have liked my father to do with me.
Just last week, Lorenzo happily trained again. After the match, we spent another hour kicking the ball around until, tired and hungry, I declared the match ended, and we went home.
I learned more as we made our way home. With some ill humor, Lorenzo pointed out he was bad at scoring, and it bothered him. I told him the only goalscorers in the session had been six years old, and had spent more than a year training.
Sometimes explanations can go in one ear and out the other. But I have learned that Lorenzo sometimes just needs time to consider things. He told me he wanted to play in the match on Sunday, and then quit. I agreed, while secretly wishing Lorenzo would score a goal on Sunday, and change his mind.
Off we went to the match on the Sunday, happily. The average age of his competitors was eight years old. “But they don’t know how to play well,” said the rival trainer. The physical difference was tremendous: Lorenzo’s team lost so many goals to one.
Nikos, nearly six, was the only goal scorer. He trains with the kids who are eight or nine because he plays so well. But there wasn’t much he could do, other than hammer home a penalty which wouldn’t have made it on the VAR, but which was justified since it meant the team weren’t completely at the mercy of a massacre. At least, the wee ones could celebrate a goal.
What to me was a little disheartening, actually made Lorenzo quite happy, since the two usual goalscorers during training couldn’t break through this time, nor could they get near the goal.
After the game we hung out a little more. He wanted to score some penalties. Mission accomplished, we headed home. I stopped to buy coal since it was a Sunday, friends were coming over, and we were going to get the barbecue going. In the meantime, Lorenzo had asked for soccer boots: he wanted to keep going with the training but with the right shoes.
I don't fully understand what is happening to him, beyond my suspicions and theories. It would be easier to indulge him and have him stop going.
I can see too that his emotional regulation — from tolerance to frustration and perseverance — is coming along. I don’t want to ask too much of my son, but nor do I want him to give up because, above all, he is happy during training and the matches — after, too. This is when he says he wants to keep playing — on the good days.
So we’ll carry on like this for now, making sure that this capitalist dynamic of trying something out and throwing it away as long as it is not shiny anymore doesn’t get installed in his mindset. Because those habits then transfer to all areas of life.
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See you soon.
With love,
Nacho
🙏 Many thanks to Worldcrunch for translating and editing this newsletter.
