Should you let kids quit sports and activities?

My niece was quite good at gymnastics and seemed to love the sport. She was one of those kids who did handstands on the beach and flips on the trampoline and handsprings on the front lawn. Before her ninth birthday, she'd made the competitive team at her gym.

And some six months later, she told her parents she wanted to quit.

And they let her. Because they thought she was right to find the coach's gymnastics—needs-to-be-your-life attitude off putting — if not downright frightening. My niece had just finished third grade. Why should any one activity consume her life?

Still, as is often the case, I don't think the decision to let my niece quit came easily, for her or her parents. The decision to let our kids abruptly drop something — whether it's a sport, an instrument or an activity — rarely is.

Our friends over at the Whoa, Momma! blog wrote about this issue last week. In their post, the case-study child was just 5, so it's a little easier to think, yeah, maybe you do just let her quit the thing that seems to be making her so unhappy (in this case, swim team).

But as our kids get older, we don't want them to learn that you just drop commitments whenever they get hard, time consuming or, even, boring, right? Plus, there is often the issue of not letting down other players on the team.

So it seems reasonable, in many cases, to tell a kid they need to finish a season or a session of dance classes but can stop after that. It's also hard not to think about the money and time already invested in said activity.

On the other hand, if one of my children was really miserable (and the source of the misery wasn't something that we or the coach/teacher could seem to ease), I'm not sure I could insist they plug along for too long.

A recent Good Housekeeping article offers some good tips for evaluating whether throwing in the towel makes sense. It suggests you ask yourself these questions:

1. What's really bothering my child? The coach, a mean teammate, something else? And can we help fix it?

2. Is my child burnt out because they've got too much else going on? Maybe scaling back, in that case, makes sense.

3. Does my child hate to be less than perfect and wants to quit because they aren't that good yet? Maybe it's time to learn you don't need to be the best.

4. Am I (or the other parent) too invested in this activity? It's not fair to push kids into things — or insist they stick with them — because we loved them or we harbor dreams of their success on the stage or the field.

Find more advice for moms at orlandosentinel.com/momsatwork