Why Your Once-Enthusiastic Elementary Kid Stops Trying New Things: The Phase No One Talks About
The crumpled talent show sign-up slip was tucked under a half-eaten granola bar in my 9-year-old daughter’s backpack when we got to the car last Tuesday. She’d spent three weeks practicing the card trick she learned at summer camp, showing it off to her grandma and our dog every night after dinner. I leaned against the car door and asked if she’d turned it in. She kicked a loose piece of gravel across the parking lot, scuffed asphalt with her rain boot, and shrugged. “I don’t wanna do it.”
I didn’t push right then. I’d seen this coming, in small bits, for a few months. Two years ago, she’d belted Encanto songs at the top of her lungs through the entire grocery store, not caring that other shoppers were staring. Last semester, she quit art club after two meetings, saying only that it was “lame” when I asked why. She used to bring home every lopsided clay pot and messy crayon drawing to tape to our fridge. Now she shoves her sketchbook in the back of her closet when my sister comes to visit, saying her art is “bad.”
I brought it up at her fall parent-teacher conference last month, expecting Ms. Henderson, her 4th grade teacher, to tell me it was just pre-tween moodiness. Instead, she nodded like I’d brought up something she talks about all the time, but rarely hears parents ask about. “This hits almost every kid around 9 or 10,” she said. “It’s the first time they can really see themselves the way other people see them. Before that, they just do stuff because it’s fun. Suddenly they can think, ‘What if I mess up? What if everyone thinks I’m bad?’ They don’t have words for that feeling half the time, so they just check out. No one talks about it because everyone’s too busy worrying about the teen years or the terrible twos.”
That clicked for me. I’d been thinking she was losing her spark, that I’d done something to break her confidence. I’d tried all the wrong things: pushing her to “just try it,” telling her she was amazing at everything, asking her over and over what was wrong. All that did was make her shut down more.
First, I stopped asking “why don’t you want to do it?” That question always puts them on the spot, like they have to defend a feeling they don’t even understand. Instead, I started naming the feeling for her. After the talent show slip incident, we were driving home, and I said, “It seems like you’re worried you’ll mess up the trick, and everyone will think it’s bad, huh?” She stared out the window at the passing cornfields for five minutes, then mumbled, “Lily’s magic trick is way cooler. What if I forget the steps and everyone boos?” Just saying it out loud took half the weight off it. I didn’t tell her not to worry, or that she’d be great. I just said, “I forget the words to my favorite song when I have to sing it at karaoke with my friends. That feeling sucks, right?” She nodded. That was it, no big speech needed.
I stopped offering all or nothing options. Instead of pushing her to sign up for the whole talent show or commit to a whole semester of art club, I started offering low-stakes ways to dip a toe in. For the talent show, I said, “What if you come to the rehearsal after school this week just to watch? If you decide you want to do it, you can sign up last minute. If not, we’ll go get your favorite mint chocolate chip ice cream after. No pressure, no hard feelings.” For art, I started keeping a cheap sketchbook and a pack of markers in the car, and when we wait for her little brother to finish soccer practice, we draw stupid cartoons of our dog together. No one sees them, we don’t talk about how good they are, we just laugh at the stupid jokes we put in them. After a month of that, she mentioned last week that she might join art club again next semester. No big announcement, just an offhand comment while we stirred pasta.
I also shifted how I talk about the things she makes. I used to say, “Wow, that’s such a good drawing, you’re such a great artist!” Now I talk about the part that has nothing to do with how good it is. I’ll say, “I love that you gave the unicorn a pizza for a horn, that’s such a silly idea,” or “That was really fun watching you practice the trick, I didn’t see that card coming at all.” It’s a small change, but I noticed it takes the pressure off being perfect. She doesn’t have to be good, she just has to do something she thinks is fun.
Last weekend, we went to a 10th birthday party for a classmate, and they had a karaoke machine set up in the basement. All the kids were crowding around the mic, yelling lyrics at the top of their lungs. My daughter hung back by the snack table, eating a cupcake and watching. A couple months ago, I would’ve leaned over and nudged her, asked if she wanted to go sing. This time, I just sat next to her and said, “These speakers are so loud my ears are ringing. You wanna sit with me out here for a minute?” She nodded, and we sat for ten minutes, people-watching and splitting another cupcake. Then, halfway through the next song, she got up and went over to the mic, sang one verse of her favorite song with her best friend, and came right back to the couch.
It’s been three weeks since the talent show sign-up, and she still hasn’t turned her slip in. That’s fine. This phase isn’t something you fix in a month, and it doesn’t end with a big, happy ending where she’s back to the totally carefree kid she was at six. I think that carefree kid is still there, she’s just learning how to exist around other people’s opinions now, and that’s hard. No one talks about this phase, because it’s quiet, it’s messy, it doesn’t make for cute social media posts. But it’s normal. Some days I remember to do all the small, right things, and some days I forget and push her too hard. We’re still figuring it out, day by day.
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