When do we let our kids quit?

He went to Nationals with two broken wrists. Stress fractures in the growth plates. We had known the entire competitive gymnastics season what we were risking, but he would pop two Advil on our 45-minute drive to practice after school every day and head into the gym for the next five hours. This had been our routine for the past seven years, minus the Advil—that was a new addition, since he’d become the Virginia high bar champion at age 5, standing on that podium, grinning from ear to ear, chest exploding towards the sky as he lifted the medals dangling around his neck with pride. 

Now, at Nationals, I nervously watched him compete, with bouncing knees and covered eyes peeking through fingers, alongside my husband, who steadied the video camera on his son as he’d expertly done for so many years.

He won the National Championship on the high bar. And also on floor. And second place on rings.

Man, what a feeling. For him. For us. To put in so much hard work and accomplish your dreams despite the obstacles. And there had been many obstacles. Along the way, he’d broken toes, fingers, a shoulder, his elbow, and his femur, to name a few. Eventually, we wised up and put his pediatric sports orthopedist on speed dial. 

Each time was a setback, because you can’t be out of the gym for long without experiencing a setback. Each time overcoming not just the physical but the mental to become even stronger. Even greater.

He loved gymnastics.

Until one day, three months after winning high bar at Nationals, one month after having both wrists removed from casts, and three weeks into physiotherapy, he didn’t.

We were driving home from practice one evening. He dug out a handful of Chick-Fil-A grilled nuggets from the bag where I’d been keeping them warm, popped a few in his mouth, and casually said, “I think I might want to quit gymnastics.”

My heart sank. I nodded. Honestly, we’d been here before.

The femur break had been significant. He’d spent so many months out of the gym that he’d fallen out of the shape required by the sport. He had to learn to walk again, not to mention run with enough power for a double front flip on floor; his muscles were weak. Some teammates taunted his newfound inabilities, causing more emotional and mental anguish. We eventually switched to a gym where taunting wasn’t tolerated. With mental healing, hours of working routines, and new skills, he came back the next season a winner.

Then, he broke his hand right before state qualifiers. A box jump gone historically bad. His coach petitioned USA Gymnastics so that he could skip states and participate at East Coast regionals based on his previous season scores, the timing of which would allow his hand to heal. With the petition secured, he once again worked through the healing of his injury to compete.

He placed third at Regionals that year. We were proud. He was angry.

Third was not good enough. If you can’t be the best, why be? He wanted to quit.

We spent several weeks discussing what he would be giving up and what he would do instead, and when we all sat down together with his coach so he could tell his coach how he was feeling and his decision to leave the team, he couldn’t. He cried. He stayed. He loved gymnastics. Gymnastics was his life. His life was gymnastics.

So that evening months after nationals, back in the car driving home, I stole a few grilled nuggets, because parenting requires protein, and I listened. I desperately tried not to give the “yeah, right” or “hell, no” face. I’m confident if you ask him, he’ll tell you I failed that task miserably.

How do we let our kids quit? I didn’t know.

“Let’s just think about it for a while. No drastic decisions,” my husband and I told him. But I knew my husband was secretly contemplating how glorious our lives would be if our family got to be home together in the evenings and not have to travel every weekend for nine months out of the year.

I, however, could not stop crying. I cried in my car. I cried when no one was home. I cried when everyone was home. I wasn’t even sure the precise cause of the flood pouring down my cheeks. 

Was it the thought of him giving up something he had worked so hard for and so long for and was amazing at? Was it the idea that his long-talked-about dream of attending Penn State on the collegiate gymnastics team would suddenly vanish? That all those Penn State sweatshirts had been purchased in vain? 

Or was it simply an overwhelming feeling of loss? 

That he would be losing one of the most important relationships in his life so far—the one with his coach with whom he spends more time than me or his dad? Or that we would all be losing our entire gymnastics family? I could not know. All I knew was the hole in my heart wouldn’t stop pleading for my attention. It wouldn’t stop aching.

We kept going for the next several weeks. To practice. To physiotherapy. Then, finally, on summer vacation, sitting on the pristine sand of Surfside beach on Nantucket one afternoon, I asked him why he wanted to quit—a question I mistakenly had not yet asked.

“I’m tired of being injured and always hurting at practice,” he told us as we sat in a line of beach chairs, the wind whipping his long hair and the sun glistening on his skin. Did I mention that the week before, he had broken two toes while dismounting off the tramp at the beginning of practice? We got it. We understood. Enough was enough.

“You’ll have to tell your coaches how you’re feeling and discuss things with them.” He already had. Before he left for vacation, he’d told them he was thinking of leaving and would decide by the time we returned. He was ready.

He had the courage. The courage to step away from the biggest thing that had defined his life so far. 

The courage to separate himself from what had so fundamentally created every ounce of the boy he had grown into. 

The courage to start again and discover what new things he would become. He had the courage. I hadn’t.

How do we let our kids quit? I finally knew. 

You let them lead the way. If they’re ready, they’ll take you all the way there, even if you aren’t.

We returned from vacation, and he attended his last practice. I watched from the parent viewing area above, where I couldn’t stop crying behind my sunglasses. He put on his grips, chalked up his hands, and climbed onto the high bar for one last go around. As I watched him stick his dismount, I wondered, with a newfound excitement, where our champion would take us next.

A version of this story was originally published on Oct. 9, 2023. It has been updated.