From Kate Early:

That’s a tough one! My first question would be: do you know why your daughter wants to quit? Are there social dynamics with the other girls that you could help her work through? Is she too tired after school and needs to go to bed a little earlier? Is she frustrated with her abilities and can you talk with her about times she persevered through frustration and achieved her goal? My inclination is to have her honor the commitment and grow through the experience even if she ultimately quits dancing. And when I say “grow”, I mean more than just telling her “You will go to dance because you made the commitment.” As a therapist I constantly sit with people who are in difficult, undesirable circumstances that they cannot escape. A key life skill is learning how to live with discomfort and not running away every time we face a difficult task, person, relationship, boss, problem, challenge, etc.

From Kate Early:

Great question. I’ve found there are many reasons kids don’t perform/act/behave as we’d like. Here are a few examples and how I handle them:

Sometimes my 5-year-old will insist he cannot buckle his seat belt even though he has been doing so for a year now. In this case, I know he can do it but his frustration, laziness, tiredness or stress is impeding him. Since I believe a key life skill is learning to be responsible even when we don’t want to be, I’m going to make him do it. I will say something like, “Sounds like you need to take a break and some deep breaths. I’ll go ahead and put the car in park until you’re ready. No hurry.” Being delayed for school or play time is enough of a motivator for him to pull himself together and buckle the seat belt.

There are other times when I sense my kids are feeling the pains of growing up and responsibility and really just want to be comforted, in which case, I can relate by saying, “I get it. It’s so hard to clean up the basement day after day after day. That’s how I feel about the laundry. Anything you can do to make it more fun to clean up?”

Still other times, I sense that it’s just not the right moment to push them to do something. For example, over the summer, I tried to get my son to practice writing and identifying numbers and letters so he could prepare for preschool. I tried to make it fun and casual, but even so, he outright refused and I had to give up trying. Now he comes home everyday from kindergarten and writes whole sentences! He can count to 200. He is asking me how to spell words. Timing!