In response to "Your 7-yr old now: Quitting activity" article

 Recently our 7 years old HG had to take an entire week off of school as he had persistent fever (which eventually turned out to be flu type B. Fortunately other kids didn't seem to catch it), then the subsequent week he started throwing a tantrum upon waking up for the school in the morning. Also he started resisting often on going to after school lessons that he had never missed. He now takes naps often after he comes back home, which I can recall the last time he did in the past. While we have no idea what's going on, I reviewed how he's been with the extracurricular activities so far. I figured that he's been too busy, and he might have realized that by himself, so we're dropping some activities particularly the ones he has been struggling. Although he keeps showing interests in trying new activities and in excelling everything (both of which are great), now I'm ok to put a pause on responding to him saying "Can you sign me up to this?" see how he'll go for the rest of spring semester.

Your 7-year-old now (babycenter.com) that we received via email was a timely reading saying:

Rest assured you're not rearing a quitter if you give in. Under age 8 or 9, children don't really have a sense of what they'll like until they try it out. Some parents make kids wait until the end of a session or season, while others let it drop rather than force an unwilling participant.

Either scenario is okay. Consider getting the input of the instructor or leader. Try to evaluate whether your child wants to quit impulsively, because of a minor glitch like an argument with a friend, or whether the desire runs deeper.

In HG's case, he has 3 lessons after-school during weekdays, some of which come with homework. And on the entire Saturday he stays at Japanese school in Atlanta, for which he also has homework. It's been a struggle to be honest as parents to have him finish homework and go to all of these every week, but except for occasional tantrums he's been mostly ok. But as mentioned above we're seeing a change in his emotion so we might have to change as well.

I as an adult have a memory of my own from my 7-yr old-hood, how I felt upon certain situations, what I liked and didn't like, unclear gaseous emotions I had in mind but wasn't able to verbalize back then. HG is very different from how I was when I was 7. So my experience doesn't help much. All these are new to me.

"After-the-lesson" impromptu practice is the fun part of going to lesson.