‘Teaching your kid to be an adult’: 12-year-old daughter backs out of all of her commitments and now wants to quit the cross-country team she begged to join, so mom forces her to call the coach herself and quit with her whole chest

How do parents know when it's time to teach a life lesson?

When it comes to parenting, it is all about learning life lessons, and I don't just mean for the kids. Everyone is learning as they go. It doesn't matter if you've read all of the parenting books, learned from the best, taken all the classes, and watched all of the info movies. Parenting is a unique experience to every single family. There will be many many things that happen that you could never plan for. That's just how life works, bestie. But as long as you do your best and you do it with love, you're doing great. 

That being said, one of the most difficult skills to learn as a parent, but also one of the most necessary, is to learn when the best time is to turn a situation into a life lesson. You don't want to traumatize your kid and force them to do something that is actually not good for them in the long run. But you also don't want them to miss a moment in life where they could have learned, grown from, and become a better person. 

A mother has turned to Reddit asking for advice on the life lesson she is trying to teach her 12-year-old. Her kid keeps quitting things. She begs to be a part of a team, but then after hardly any time, she quits. It's apparently gotten out of hand. Now, she begged to be part of a cross-country team because she loved to run. She joined, and lo and behold, now she wants to quit. Her excuse this time is that it is too hot now. But her mom thinks that she is becoming "flaky" and noncommittal, which she doesn't want to instill in her kid. 

Her life lesson? You can quit if you'd like, but you have to do it yourself. Her middle ground is making her kid do her own quitting instead of what she has been doing, which is calling up the coaches and quitting for her. Now, her daughter has to face the consequences of her own actions and quit. The mom feels a bit bad, though, because her daughter says she has phone anxiety… But maybe that is also a lesson to learn? Let's see what Reddit thinks…