What to do when your child wants to quit karate
- Zoe Jagger-Hinis
- Nov 10, 2025
- 8 min read
It’s Tuesday afternoon - karate is at 4:30pm, it’s now 4pm, and your darling child, light of your life, utters the dreaded words: “I want to quit karate!”
You stand there, mouth open, holding their belt in your hand, and whether that belt is yellow, or blue, or even brown, no parent wants to hear that sentence. It hits a nerve immediately: have I raised a quitter? Is this going to be their refrain for the rest of their lives? After all those weeks and months of training, this is it? Where did I go wrong?
Let’s back up a second, and do some problem-solving before we start with the threats and cajoling.
For context, I’ve been doing karate since 2006, teaching full time since 2015, and parenting my own karate kid for the last 7. I go through this regularly and I know how incredibly frustrating it is. It’s even worse when you’re a karate student yourself, and you know the immense value of training. Maybe they’ve been doing this a long time, and they’re so close to black belt, but the “I-don’t-want-tos” start up. All those years, not necessarily wasted, but definitely felt as soon as they declare they want to quit.
We don’t have to go nuclear (even though it is so tempting) - let’s start with a few whys, and a few tools for helping them get back into their gi and onto the mat, as well as when it might be time to let go.
Because if you know your kid loves karate - they always leave the dojo happy, they zoom out the car once they are there, then hope is not lost. You can rule out that they hate karate, and that this battle might be fought and won today.
But remember - a missed class once in a while is okay. There will be days (and you know your child best) when something is just not right, and a day off everything is necessary. That’s okay, and to be expected. This is for when there seems to be absolutely no reason for this sudden refusal.
Kids, Pre-Frontal Cortexes, And Sleuthing
Karate is nearly always an afternoon/early endeavour for kids. After a long school day, and possibly an extra-mural already completed, they’re tired. As adults, we struggle to summon up the motivation to go to gym/run/do laundry at the best of times, and this is with (hopefully) a fully-developed prefrontal cortex. We have the ability to motivate and see into our own futures - its why we save money, wear seatbelts and try to eat better. We understand that our actions now have consequences later.
Kids? They can only live now, in one present, in this body, and in this moment. They can’t fathom that one day they could be a proud black belt, with strength of mind, spirit and body, and all the good things that karate can bring. They just see an adult nagging them to put on a hot, uncomfortable karate suit after a long day. They just got home, and now Mom is up in their grill, waving a karate belt and asking “where are your gi pants???”
Most of the time, it’s got nothing to do with karate. So we’re going to make a checklist to go through before we assume the worst.
They don't have a 'check fuel' gauge Have they found nourishment and water for their fragile mortal vessels? Most of the time, I find I’m coming up against the Hanger, which is the worst time to ask anyone for anything, regardless of age. Kids, and especially neurodivergent kids, can miss their own hunger cues. We’ve found that having a snack ready in the car after school pick-up helps head off a bunch of arguments later. Your request “can you please get your gi?” might be met more willingly on a full tummy. Again, I know this sounds obvious, but if I’m making this mistake at least twice a month, then maybe other parents are too. Also, are they getting the recommended amount of sleep? On Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, self-actualisation sits right at the top. So many things need to be met before we have the desire to improve ourselves. Who has the motivation to go to karate when your blood sugar is through the floor?
This problem might have started somewhere else If they are fed and watered, then we gently ask if there’s something that happened at school. Maybe there was a drama with a friend, or an unkind word from a teacher/peer that is bugging them. Sitting at their eye level and asking (not interrogating, my fellow spicy parents) “hey, did something happen at school today?” might give us some clues. Obviously, if there are hectic family issues (divorce, death, trauma), of course karate is not a priority. And if it really was a bad day, perhaps today is not the day to fight the karate battle.
Time is a construct (but we still need to abide) Kids are often timeblind, and like adults, don’t like being rushed from one activity to the other. We all hate being hassled along. It’s the pits when you’re in the middle of a snack and now you’ve been summoned to a meeting. What often helps is trying (I know its not always possible) to build in a buffer between activities. Having time to decompress after school and before dojo makes that transition so much easier. We use a rainbow timer like this one to show how much time is left before we have to get ready for karate/start reading homework etc. It has made such a difference in getting our kids to move from one task to the other. (Confession time: I use the timer while they’re at school to keep track of my own work, because ADHD and time management are mortal enemies.)
More extra-curriculars than time I hate to sound old, but we definitely had far less on our plates growing up than kids do now. This obsession with futureproofing kids is leading them to be burnt out and mentally fragile. On top of their ridiculous homework demands, they have more activities than toenails. They are shuttled from school to extra lessons to coding/robotics to piano to chess, and then finally, dropped off at the dojo. We all thrive when we have a level of autonomy, but we have this weird adult idea that kids either don’t have a desire for autonomy, or they don’t deserve any of it at all. So when they are being shunted around from activity to activity, the rebellion they know will get your attention is to refuse to go where they are told to, even when they know its good for them. They will especially make the karate threat when they know it's important to you (and they always know, because they keep track of what you praise, and what you post, and how you talk about their karate.) My firstborn knows that his karate is important to us, and he knows it is a big red button to push. Then the discussion needs to be had about whether there’s just too much on their plate right now. Maybe speak to Sensei and see if there’s another class they can do on a different day. Maybe another activity can be shuffled around. Or maybe, we have to accept as parents that our kids can do anything, but they can’t do everything, and something has got to give. (This is why my firstborn isn’t signed up for the chess lessons he so greatly desires: because there’s no time left in the week.)
Why go to karate when you can watch brainrot on Youtube shorts? Screens are the enemy. You don’t need me to tell you that games and social media and streaming are all designed for maximum addiction. How can their underdeveloped brains withstand the onslaught of cheap dopamine hits, when grown-ass adults can’t even look up from Instagram? I know this battle, and I know it well. If you want them to get anything done, the screens can only come out after karate, if you have to allow them at all. Once we banished screens from our weekdays, everything got easier. Trying to pry these kids from their dopamine-dispensing devices means you are parenting on veteran mode. Ain’t nobody got time for that.
So maybe it wasn’t someone at school, but it could be someone at the dojo. Another kid, a sempai, or even Sensei. I know I’ve said things that have upset a student. If the parents or the student tell me, it is 100% my responsibility to make authentic amends. I am so very human, and over the course of teaching hundreds, if not thousands of hours, I’m bound to mess up. Sometimes, there’s a bit of meanness, or even just a thoughtless comment from a peer that can make a child reluctant to return. But if Sensei doesn’t know there’s a problem, they can’t fix it. Hopefully you have an open line of communication with the dojo. I know I spend a fair amount of time playing Judge Judy for students who have issues with each other. 95% of the time, it can be resolved in 5 minutes. Twenty minutes later, these two enemies are now besties again. It’s rarely so serious that someone needs to either be bumped to another class or kicked out the dojo.
And finally: maybe, just maybe, this is the end of their karate chapter (for now). If this has been a recurring battle, and they’re not happy after class, and they are actively miserable, then it is for the best to let it go. There are literally thousands of kids (and adults!) around the world that try karate for a little while, and realise it's not their thing. I tried violin for a while, and realised that it wasn’t for me. Or teens who’ve trained since they were little getting bored or distracted, and off they go to whatever’s cooler. Lately, it seems to be hockey and dance. Sometimes, life gets in the way, and the longer you stay out, the easier it gets to never go back. And the longer kids stay out, the more they fall behind, and when they return after a month, they realize everyone’s advanced without them. Like school, you can’t just miss a term and expect to be up to date.
There’s always the chance that they will come back some day. Some do. Many don’t. Sometimes, it really just is what it is. We as instructors have to learn that it isn’t always personal. We can only be grateful for the time we have with every student. We are the lighthouses, they are the ships that take guidance as long as they need to, and then move on. And that’s okay, because even if we could keep them all, we wouldn’t have enough space.
All of this to say that while it is normal to panic (and tempting to make threats) when your child refuses to go to karate, there are so many things we can cross off our list before we assume the worst. There have been so many times I’ve talked parents through this, and it turns out it was just a bad day, or something completely unrelated to karate. Everyone hits a plateau, and it's so normal that it is boring.
You don’t think that in two decades, I haven’t wanted to quit? So that I could have a normal life like other people? To not have to hear "your stances suck" ever again? Of course I’ve had those moments. But there have always been more reasons to stay than to go. Ché and I work hard to make our dojo the kind of place people love to be, and where everyone can thrive. It’s never been more important for a dojo to be a place for people to have healthy, wholesome interactions. Kids should be hanging out with their mates at the dojo, not talking to Chat GPT for some hollow facsimile of friendship.
So no, they probably don’t want to quit. You might have to do some detective work to figure out what the actual problem is, but hey - parenting isn’t easy. And remember: parenting is only hard for good parents. I hope that some of these tools will help you when the occasional “I don’t WANNA!” pops up. It will. It does. But it doesn’t automatically mean the end.
Comments