Wow Will was such a part of my childhood watching Star Trek. Obviously, he didn't appear often but he was memorable simply because there were so few people as young as him on the show.
Sad to hear this all around. This also brought back memories of me being required to play piano growing up. I hated piano, performing (recitals), playing in general. I was terrrribbleee (still am) and was put up in lessons for 12 years. I fought tooth and nail as I got older and eventually was so bad my parents stopped at 16.
Music is a very "asian" or "chinese" thing to put your child through. As well as being good academically. This part of my life was a sore spot, but not even close Will's situation.
As I have young children of my own today, I'm faced with these questions. What is a healthy amount of pushing vs too much? I don't need my kid to be the best at anything - I just don't want them to be lost/dead-in-the-water or unable to fend for themselves.
> Music is a very "asian" or "chinese" thing to put your child through.
Asian culture simply adopted American and English culture in this regard. In the United States circa 1950s and 1960s it was very common for children to be taking piano lessons, and owning a piano was also relatively common. Both the lessons and the piano itself were important status symbols, and having both were considered markers of being middle-class. My mother's side was middle-class Irish-Catholic and she and all her siblings had to take lessons; they also grew up with a piano in the home. By contrast, my fathers side was working-class Polish-German and both pianos and piano lessons were well out of reach--the family cleaned the church on weekends for reduced Catholic school tuition. But I think all 4 of my paternal aunts did have pianos in their homes as adults. So most of my cousins (all maternal, most paternal) grew up with pianos in their homes, though their parents were much less strict about lessons.
My wife, who grew up in Malaysia, had the same experience as my mother. All of her grandparents were already middle-class (shop owners, professionals, etc), but old-world Chinese middle-class where status markers were making donations to religious and fraternal organizations or studying calligraphy. It was her parents generation that bought pianos and forced the kids to take lessons. And doing the same was important for both she and her brother. (I also appreciate the desire, it's just less of a parental priority for me.)
The practice may be a little stickier in Asian culture (both in Asia and Asian diaspora) as the piano slotted into similar, pre-existing social customs which may remain more durable, but I think the overall arc is basically the same, just shifted up one or two generations.
> Asian culture simply adopted American and English culture in this regard
Since the OP mentioned China specifically, I think it’s good to note that the Chinese elite have venerated art for millennia. Poetry writing, singing, and playing musical instruments were a staple of every young nobles education during the times of the Imperial dynasties.
It’s not at all something simply copied from the British during colonization.
I've never heard of a Chinese/Asian parent forcing the erhu or pipa on their kids though: it's always Western instruments, particularly the violin and piano.
When I posted the comment, I was actually thinking about the guqin and other zither instruments. Violin was fairly popular 10ish years ago due to multiculturalist/globalist attitudes, but now there's been a push (manufactured or not) to use 'classical Chinese' instruments and play classical Chinese music instead of say Beethoven.
A great many East Asians greatly admire Western music. At it's best it's both mathematically interesting and aesthetically beautiful. Frankly, I admire their utter lack of cultural insecurity.
I learned music as a kid, and my kids did as well. I know from talking to parents, that the status thing is real, and there's also a belief that music teaches self discipline. (Likewise math). but it's not the only consideration. Piano and violin can be played by small hands. There are lots of teachers. And Western music itself has colonized the world. A lot of people have probably never heard the indigenous music of their own home countries, or have only heard it in formal settings.
You can read into that, that violin and piano are considered to be high status. And yes, probably, the current 20th century legacy of western culture being high status.
While pushing kids to learn western classical music may be common among the Chinese and Korean (and Japanese?), it isn't so with Indians. But some Indians, especially Hindu Brahmins, do nudge their kids to take up indian classical dancing, singing or push them to learn some indian instruments. Still, it isn't to the extent of forcing kids for years of classes.
> In the United States circa 1950s and 1960s it was very common for children to be taking piano lessons, and owning a piano was also relatively common.
Growing up in Scotland in the 1970s and 1980s my friends and I all thought it was a bit weird that some people we know *didn't* have various musical instruments scattered about the house. My son was about six months old when he discovered that guitars make a noise, and since then my "living room" guitar has been tuned to open D ;-)
as a second generation Chinese American, at least growing up it seemed like keeping up with the rest of the community, but it wasn't really so much about being middle class, but more about the kind of "so and so's child is a star tennis player, a pianist, the class president, speaks three languages, and they're probably going to get into Harvard and my child is going to need to keep up."
Went to high school with the daughter of Chinese immigrants like that. Star tennis player, stellar pianist, 1st chair violinist in the city's youth orchestra, valedictorian, ivy league med school, doctor, etc...
My daughters took piano lessons and it really didn't work out, they never really enjoyed it and when the pandemic hit that was it. In retrospect I think having them do grades was a mistake. They enjoyed music and one of them even started a band with friends at school, but doing the grades was a grind. If they'd taken just fun lessons learning different types of music I think thing would have worked out very differently.
I knew a kid whose parents forced him to learn the violin. It was a social status thing, doubtless wrapped up in "it's good for you and you'll thank us" but it really was about them and jacking up their social standing a bit, and he didn't get a choice of instrument because violin had more social cachet so he got a violin and violin lessons. He totally hated it. This was in the UK some decades ago.
I’m not sure if your statement about Asian adopting this idea from the west is right, but in ancient times a Chinese scholar has to excel at 琴棋書畫, where the first is a musical instrument.
As someone who spent years self learning piano without having a piano to convince my mother to have a piano, I envy anyone why are forced to learn such thing.
I have a younger cousin who in his childhood I encouraged her mother to let him take any music lessons, where she was very reluctant. (Yeah so not all Asian will force you to learn, because it is expensive.) In the end, somehow he got into orchestra in Uni, I’m proud of him.
I’d argue that music training should be mandatory similar to other subjects like math, history, etc. Simply being put through the training progress is good education that you rarely find in other settings. Just like not everyone becomes a mathematician, it’s ok you don’t become a musician too.
There's nothing new in any civilization about the upper classes studying and venerating art and music. What was new was the emergence of large middle classes and a very rapid, peculiarly pervasive adoption of the piano in particular. It may have started in Continental Europe, but as far as I can tell it was through Victorian England that it spread across the globe--directly through the British Empire, but also indirectly through the U.S. and then, especially in Asia, Japan.
We're not talking electronic keyboards, but a large and expensive musical instrument which might cost as much as all the other furnishings in a house combined. It was usually upright pianos, which were cheaper and could sit against a wall, but still a major purchase. Today you're much more likely to find electronic keyboards in homes, which even at the higher end are still a much smaller purchase for middle-class incomes, yet you probably[citation needed] would not find them in nearly as many homes as pianos in their heyday. Pianos are extremely functional instruments and in many respects ideal for learning music, but that alone doesn't even begin to explain their popularity, nor the popularity of piano music lessons.
Different countries had their own local dynamics. The Mandarin system built up a type of middle class culture (even if the middle class itself was never very big) throughout much of East and SE Asia, making formal study of classic art and literature a virtue for non-elites, including the poor, whether or not a family could actually afford an education. Japan never adopted the Mandarin system (class hierarchy too deep and rigid), but the Meiji Restoration accomplished much the same in making virtues of the Japanese intelligentsia part of a new middle class culture. So these cultures in particular were already primed for the piano-as-modern-middle-class-status-symbol wave when industrialization exploded their middle classes. And perhaps this is why the violin and classical Western music in general also saw relatively strong adoption--because classical music was already held in esteem by the masses, and much of that esteem simply shifted to Western classical music. (By contrast, in American and some European cultures much more emphasis seems to have been placed on women learning the piano. And dynamics such as the Protestant work ethic tend to moderate mass adoption of elite norms which aren't immediately practical or beneficial.)
In any event, my point was just that this experience wrt piano lessons which are strongly encouraged and even demanded by parents has been shared (indistinguishably so, and for nearly indistinguishable reasons) by many millions of families all across the world, including in the U.S., where it approached something approximating a universal experience among the middle-class--actually taking lessons, or at least understanding that it was something you were supposed to be doing. It's just that most of those experiences outside Asia and the Asian diaspora occurred in earlier generations. The differences lay in how and when different communities arrived at that cross-cultural nexus, and how they moved away from it, if they did at all.
There are tons of adults that are thankful their parents forced them to learn something (a second language, a musical instrument, ...). There are also tons of adults forever angry at themselves for complaining to the point their parents let them stop studying whatever "it" was.
I learned Japanese as an adult. I know at least 3 Americans of Japanese descent angry at themselves for complaining to their parents to let them stop extra curricular Japanese classes as children. One was so angry I can't speak an Japanese around him because it just triggers his self loathing over this issue.
I don't have an answer. My dad's side of the family were all professional musicians (though they had other jobs too). My dad never pushed me to play and basically said if I wanted to learn I'd have to push for lessons. Of course I was a kid and just wanted to play video games. I personally wish (or think I wish) they had pushed a little more.
I think the answer is to let them try different things. There's going to be something that they like better than the others. If they keep begging you to stop making them do a thing, that's a clue that it's not the right one.
I think I'd like to say to my son when he gets older, "You have to have at least one skill you're actively developing that takes several years to master. It can be piano or chess or language or baseball or StarCraft or juggling, but it has to be something that takes time to master, and you have to spend at least a few hours every week in deliberate practice."
I also plan on modeling that behavior by having skills I continue to develop for the rest of my life.
Framing this a requirement with specific criteria that must be met feels a bit strange to me. I'm assuming you get into more of the nuance as to why you are telling him that he must do these things...
In the beginning giving up early seems like no big deal to the parent. At some point they might get a little uneasy. Are you maybe inadvertently teaching your child that giving up is okay by giving in too early and often? On the flip side, being increasingly heavy handed about finally sticking with the current thing because you are also battling with your own sense of time getting short to teach persistence seems problematic.
When your 8yr old kid says they want to stop going go school and just stay at home and play video games to you let them? Or do you make them go to school? (most parents would make them go to school and many of the same parents that would force their kids to go to school are the same parents who say "don't force your kids to do stuff".
I don't know where to draw the line but the fact that many parents are doing both suggests they really haven't applied any actual thought to why one is okay to force and the other is not.
Ooh, this definitely struck a chord in me, as I fall right into that stereotype.
I was forced to play piano for 10 years and to do all those recitals and music theory tests. I could never wiggle myself out of it because of all the guilt-tripping. So of course, I went to college and promptly dropped all of it.
And unexpectedly, nearly a decade later, this pandemic thing happened, I returned to piano, recently bought a digital piano, and found a teacher. I practice 1-2 hours every day. And a lot of those skills I thought I would have lost returned pretty quickly.
I have a lot of complicated emotions around this that I haven’t really quite figured out. But if I were to summarize them at their current stage, they’d be something like: (1) I am grateful that I was pushed to learn this instrument, (2) I realized I really disliked my childhood piano teacher, (3) my parents failed to recognize that for 10 years (as evidenced by never presenting the option of finding someone else), and (4) playing to inflate someone else’s ego is absolutely demotivating.
One of the unfortunate effects is that roughly 1/3rd of Mozart’s sonatas are unplayable because I have some bad memories associated with them. Fortunately, there’s plenty of music in the world that don’t trigger those feelings, and I am so glad that I didn’t play that much Chopin back then.
Maybe that might help? I’m not a parent, so consider these raw ideas that need some work to become parenting advice.
My daughter is 12, she has been taking piano lessons for several years now. About a year-and-a-half ago she started saying that she didn’t want to continue. Hated her lessons, didn’t like her teacher any more, etc. We of course weren’t happy about this because she was playing very well. We do believe in honouring our kids’ wishes, coupled however with the requirement that they meet their commitments: in this case, that my daughter finish that year of instruction. In the meantime we coached her on pressuring herself less and tried to support her.
Over that period, something changed. She started watching YouTube videos of pianists. She heard about the Canadian pianist, Bruce Liu, who won the Chopin piano competition last year, and started saying she wanted to be the first female Canadian to win the same competition. She started practicing all the time, and we got her a new piano, an upright instead of an electronic one. She is still working hard like this.
I don’t know why or how this happened, but I am glad it turned out this way. On the flip side, she also used to take ballet, and was very good at it, but didn’t want to continue that either. Once again we insisted she finish the year, and after that she didn’t want to enrol so we let that lapse.
Indeed it is. Our rule of thumb is that you have to finish what you start, and generally give it two chances. This worked well for me as a child. I wanted to quit everything after the first go, but there were many activities that I loved after the second go, and a few I was happy to be done with (looking at you trombone).
1. Finishing what you start means honoring the promise you made--be it to the teacher/coach, the team, or someone else. Oftentimes other people are depending on you.
2. Giving the activity a second try accounts for the possibility that the problem wasn't with the activity so much as the environment.
To be clear, I only apply these rules for the kids wanting to quit, not the parents. If, as a parent, I observe unacceptable behavior by the coach/teacher, dangerous conditions, etc I will pull the plug. Thankfully that hasn't happened yet.
I like that, I'll be borrowing it myself should I get to have children. If they make a commitment, finish it out to a specific time frame, a year of lessons will go by before you know it! A year of sports, a full season of soccer, make it to the end of the thing you're attempting before you decide to give up on it.
>my parents failed to recognize that for 10 years (as evidenced by never presenting the option of finding someone else)
Well, in this case tho, did you ever suggest it? I mean, if it was a matter of disliking the material or the teaching style, but otherwise those lessons weren't in bad form, abusive, etc., so they couldn't see anything bad about them, how would they know?
I think it's pretty common for kids to not realise something's a problem, or to not realise there are other possibilities. Something happened to me as a kid that had a significant negative effect on my life, but I only understood that decades later, and no one else was aware of the problem at the time.
For me, it was relatively strict parents sending me to a relatively strict piano teacher who also was a parent, and that combination can be a force multiplier for a bad time. All of them had similar cultural backgrounds as well, being first generation immigrants from the same country.
mkl's reply described it the way I would have explained it. There is that inherent power dynamic between parents and children that can make it difficult to speak up. In addition, piano teachers teaching children are effectively in a parental role for that time.
That's something to keep in mind for anyone who finds themselves in a position of authority over children, who are still in the early stages of expanding their perspectives of the world they live in.
I think a lot about how much pushing is the right amount.
When I was very young I had piano lessons. My memories are only dim, but I think I enjoyed them. I also gave them up quite quickly. I distinctly remember trying to play a little tune and messing it up again and again. I didn't have the skills to deal with my frustration and anger. I didn't have the perseverance. Perhaps if someone had helped me through this I could have persisted, or perhaps it was just too early for me and I needed some more life experience before I could handle it.
When it comes down to it I think kids need lots of opportunities to try many things, as well as the experience of "going deep" on one thing. It doesn't really matter if it's dance, music, art, programming, languages or whatever. There's always the meta-game of skill acquisition going on. Learning that time, effort, consistent practice, thoughtful reflection are useful is the real goal.
It's also worth remembering that children are unique people with unique personalities. They will all have different challenges and respond to the world around them in different ways.
The way I handle this with my kids is that if they don't feel like going to some activity at some point I will try to give a bit of a push (sometimes it's more about leaving the current activity then going to the next). However, I make very sure they enjoy the activities. If my daughter say they want to stop generally we will stop immediately. I am quite lucky though, if anything they need to be held back a bit, my older sometimes complains that there are not enough days in the week because wants to try something more.
The movie Whiplash looks into this question. It goes to the extreme, and while I never had anything like abuse in my school music career there were a few spots that made me think back.
My experience at music conservatory in England was very close to the bone on this movie. It was painful to watch in many ways, so in respect it’s well done and an accurate representation of the egotistical way things work in this world professionally.
Most music colleges have a suicide garden because the pressure is so intense. A suicide garden for a place inhabited by mostly teenagers. Think about that for a sec.
Ultimately I gave up on being a professional musician because I graduated in 2008, once you graduate you realise you’re competing against everyone else in the world and that’s much harder than just your peers, and IT reliable pay cheques were comfortable.
I’m a happy hobby musician these days but it took me nearly a decade to start enjoying to play music again after the competitive rat race of music college.
When I was a small child I begged my mother to ask my teacher to excuse me from school music lessons. They were recorder lessons. And 20 children with recorders were giving me a literal headache every week.
My teacher excused me but reached out to my mother with the business card of a piano teacher she knew, as she considered music to be important.
I am eternally grateful that she did, and that I gave it a try, because even though I was never going to concert-grade piano player, it did mean I had enough music theory knowledge to play around meaningfully with early midi sequencers -- and those skills landed me a professional job in radio production straight out of high-school.
I've always been someone who found listening to music important (my father's hobby). 3 kids in elementary school went to 'music school'. I found them posh. I tried once, tagging along, but I guess my ADHD-like symptoms didn't work out (NB: ~quarter of century later I got an autism diagnosis). I also found the teacher very authoritarian. That's the thing: if people were friendly with me they could reach for the stars, but that cold authoritarian method just didn't work with me. Fast forward a few years, I wanted to get into producing music in the 90s, but I could never understand how to connect a synth to something else. I didn't know which cables I needed, what they'd cost, etc. No (IRL) network about music production. Failed. I consider my story being the nemesis of yours. Kudos!
I had piano and clarinet lessons as a kid, and kept them up into my teens. I rarely practiced except when I was forced to, and I wasn't very good at practising when I did. I don't consider this abuse by the way, I was "forced" to go to school lessons too (not that I'm questioning Wil Wheaton's experience, which sounds quite different). Ultimately I found the repetition required in practising extremely boring, and I didn't have enough inner drive to get better. There's probably (a lack of) natural aptitude involved too, although this is hard to disentangle from motivation - a negative feedback loop maybe.
When I hear an good musician now, I inevitably wish I'd tried harder and could do what they do. If I hadn't had lessons, perhaps I'd blame my folks for the fact that I can't play jazz. But I was given every opportunity, had lessons for years, and didn't prioritise it. I just accept that it wasn't for me.
My parents also encouraged me to join a choir, and whilst I tended to daydream in choir practice, I kept that up into adulthood and it's had a major impact on my life.
> But I was given every opportunity, had lessons for years, and didn't prioritise it. I just accept that it wasn't for me.
I have a similar story to yours, just with clarinet and flute. Our school (outside the USA) had mandatory lessons and practice, so there was some degree of being forced to do it.
I took some piano lessons as an adult and enjoyed it. My piano teacher told me something that really stuck with me. "People who write Adult piano books know the learner isn't going to become a professional classical musician. So they just teach you to play some fun songs and you can enjoy it. Children's music education makes kids suffer under the assumption that they are might one day take it very seriously and become classical musicians. So you perform scales endlessly, have to learn perfect form, learn instruments you don't want to learn because you need to learn the clarinet before you can learn the Sax, learn a bunch of boring classical music when you are excited by other stuff on the radio, practice like crazy for exams, etc. It completely kills their interest in music."
> When I hear an good musician now, I inevitably wish I'd tried harder and could do what they do.
I listen to good piano performances on YT and wish I was as good. But then I think about how much time I have spent being good with computers and realize that I could not have spent that much time on piano too. They probably spent as much time over their life pecking on a piano as I have pecking on a computer.
There is a difference between pushing you kids to try things to see what they like, and pushing you kids to keep doing something when they've tried it and told you they want to stop.
The problem with this is fear of failure. If kids consider a skill worthwhile, from programming to sport to violin, and they see how good one can be (which can be hard to avoid especially for music) they will get fear of failure.
The next thing they'll tell you is they wish to stop. You cannot talk a kid out of fear of failure. I've never made the least bit of headway.
You shouldn't let them stop, and even force them to practice long enough (like >15 minutes, I'm not talking hours) that they forget about fear of failure and enjoy the next 15 minutes. Maybe even get them into the situation that there's nothing but the violin or some puzzle in code they don't understand for 5 minutes or so. Sport is good for this. If they do Judo and there is a duel, that's 2 minutes they will be focusing on the opponent. Somehow people don't easily get tired of this, and of course they focus.
It's all a balance. Should you let them struggle or give them answers directly? Should you give them opponents that are easy or hard ? Too easy? Too hard? Should you practice very directly or let them choose direction (they inevitably choose unattainable targets, so it's not as easy as you're thinking, but you may be able to guide them to a reasonable choice). Should you push them, maybe even "punish" them (take away cell phone for example)? I've known my kids to literally ask for that (taking away cell phone until they've completed homework or some practice).
And everything works like those opponents in Judo. The more they fight, the harder and stronger the opponent can be while they still learn. At 10 some can take "normal" adults and at 13-14 or so some kids are very liable to win against adults double their weight. But even "meta" this works. The more you push them, the harder you can push them without negative consequences and you should build this up over time.
It's all a balance. In every one of those questions there is a horrible answer that goes way too far ... on both sides of the equation. There is way too much practice and there is way to little practice, and it's even different per kid, when they're ill or feeling well, and how old they get. Otoh, as long as you're somewhere in the middle, it doesn't matter as much as you'd think where exactly you are in the middle. And you can pick one or two, but no more, where you have a slightly more extreme choice.
also, I feel like piano and violin are the very classic choices for parents picking out music education for their kids, when there is so much more than that to the world of music.
I absolutely hated every single moment of piano and never really got good at it. It was a different story once I got selected for a chorus in school.
It's quite possible that the musical skills you picked up from your piano lessons are reason why you had the "talent" to picked for your schools chorus.
My main struggles with piano were chords, and sightreading. Chords aren't really relevant in vocals since a single person can only sing a single note at any given time, and I wasn't great at sightreading then either. And I find breath control a lot easier than trying to anticipate where my hands need to go (as someone with small hands, a lot of pieces were quite difficult)
As HN's only? lurking non-swe choral director I'll just pipe in and say that every school should have a chorus that anyone can be in without being "picked", in addition to any auditioned levels. You can learn to sing the same way you can learn any other subject/skill; that is to say it's entry-level.
To clarify, when I say picked I mean that for whatever reason at my high school every incoming freshman was screened for ability and if they were alright they got in.
There was a similar screening process for the ability to swim, though it was actually for selecting those who could not and teaching them.
This is true in a sense, but the motivation a hobby gives you can depend on your performance. It often feels like there's a skill level where you hit critical mass and feel more rewarded than frustrated.
Kids learn fast and are less afraid to fail, so they can start new things more easily.
> This is true in a sense, but the motivation a hobby gives you can depend on your performance. It often feels like there's a skill level where you hit critical mass and feel more rewarded than frustrated.
That also depends on your mindset and expectations. I've read a journal of master painter who, after roughly 40 years of doing art, still often felt frustrated and defeated after spending a day at the easel (even though 99% of people who paint would kill to be able to produce a painting he worked on).
Also, Polish poet Barańczak once said: "you know what they call a guy who enjoys writing? A hack".
The upside of hitting that critical mass is negligible to the downside of not hitting that critical mass.
Even when I get rewarded in things that I took up on my own, I feel that the rewards are quite measly compared to just having a normal healthy mental and physical existence. And these are interests that I took up on my own, I wonder how bad it would be for someone pushed by their parents.
But then again, I guess if someone grows up not having anything they're good at, they might blame their parents for not pushing them. Parenting must be very difficult.
At the same time, I understand it. There are some things simply out of reach, music you literally cannot play because those wires weren't built when you were younger.
Exactly... at the elite level activities nowadays are simply out of reach to individuals who were not wholly absorbed in it from a young age.
Federer - 8. Nadal/Djokovic - 4. S. Williams - 3. L. Hamilton - 8. M. Schumacher - 6. Verstappen - 4. Phelps - 7. Messi - 4. C. Ronaldo - 7. M. Carlsen - 5. Lebron - 9. S. Curry - 6
Some people are just lucky to be good at the things they love doing. The others have to be content with getting paid for the things that they're good at to pay for the things that they love doing.
Andre Agassi wrote an autobiography, in it he explains that his father groomed him for tennis greatness by building a tennis court in their backyard, and by sending him to tennis boarding school. Agassi also said that he had always hated tennis during his career.
This is it. There are periods in life when the time for practice is more likely to be freely available. As an adult there are other responsibilities to be negotiated.
I’ve made life choices that now result in having uninterrupted blocks of time for learning to play an instrument in my thirties. I’m surprised at how quickly some things become completely effortless when you have time to practice every day.
On the flip side, you're also less likely to be serious wanting to play an instrument, especially classical piano.
I started classical piano in primary school all the way up until I turned 17. I thought I played ok... but I started lessons again about 6 months ago (I'm turning 40 this weekend) and now that I actually want to play rather than be forced to play from tiger parents, I can honestly say that I'm learning 100 times faster than when I was a kid.
Also, now that I'm actually practicing multiple times a week rather than 30 minutes before my lesson (like when I did when I was a kid), my sight reading is blowing my mind. I could only wish to read like I do today than when I did in my teens.
Exactly. I now have an alarm that goes off every day after dinner, where I force myself (no matter how dead tired I am) to sit at the piano and play at least an hour.
But like going to the gym, the hard part is getting there. Once I'm playing, I look down at my watch and it's been over 2 hours!
> As I have young children of my own today, I'm faced with these questions. What is a healthy amount of pushing vs too much? I don't need my kid to be the best at anything - I just don't want them to be lost/dead-in-the-water or unable to fend for themselves.
If you read other things written by Wil Wheaton, you'll find (according to his description) that his parents had a very perverse relationship with each other, and used him as a pawn in whatever twisted relationship games they were playing. Neither one actually cared about him as a person. There was no way he was going to come out of a situation like that un-scarred.
"Love covers a multitude of sins." Genuinely love your kids, and you won't go too far wrong.
EDIT: From TFA:
> It’s been clear for as long as I can remember that my mom and my dad don’t feel bad or anything about how much they hurt me, or how much their choices affected my life. My dad doesn’t care at all, and never did.
Don't be like those guys, and your children won't end up like Wil.
Please don't post in the flamewar style to HN, regardless of how wrong someone's religion is or some parents are or you feel it/they are. Perhaps you don't owe bad religion or bad parents or bad internet comments better, but you owe this community better if you're participating in it.
Edit: you've unfortunately been breaking the site guidelines quite a bit recently. Could you please not? We have to ban accounts that do that—because it's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for—and I don't want to ban you.
> This also brought back memories of me being required to play piano growing up
Funnily enough, every friend brought up "working class", who had no access to music / sport etc is envious of my forced violin lessons, choir practice and sports after school all year round.
I wish I was pushed as a child to play the piano. And I did it for my child. He endured it for a year. He's talented and he's at the beginner's level, but when we observed closely, he didn't want to practise. He only did it when we threatened him with stopping the lessons. So we just let it go. Now we have a piano at the house. He sometimes plays whatever he likes. Maybe he will pick it up later in his life. Maybe I will pick it up.
All in all, I guess there is no one good way of raising a kid.
I've noticed a pattern among the childhood stories of young musicians (and artists in general). They either found the instrument fascinating on its own and were just enjoying toying with it [1] or were surrounded by people (parents, family) who enojoy playing music, and that enjoyment infected them.
On the other hand, the people I know who were forced by parents to practice piano for years have not touched it ever in their adult life. They treated it as just another chore, such as say biology class at school - something they have to do, but have no interest in and will drop from their mind as soon as they don't have to do it any more.
[1] A common subscenario here is some kind of dysfunction (prolonged illness, dysfunctional family, not fitting with other children for some reason) which pushed the kid into a lonely parallel universe of just sitting on their own and praticing their art for years.
My parents were similar (I played trombone, though I was terrible at it. Or I felt I was anyway).
One interesting thing, is the thing I am best at, I had to sneak and scrape and fight tooth and nail to do, which was learn to program on our PC: the thing that is my life and career now two decades on.
I've been programming my whole life, but all throughout my childhood my parents hated the idea of me spending my time on the computer tapping away at GameMaker v4 and work through QBasic and the C++ book a family friend gave me (I think I was using the Digital Mars compiler at the time?).
Hello there. That's eerily familiar. For me it was sports (although I was quite good at baseball and soccer) and Turbo Pascal. My parents, especially my Mom, put up a huge resistance to me programming. I had to promise to try out for the HS basketball team (easily my worst sport) to get a computer. I'd been cut the previous two years so of course I barely made the team that time.
My Mom was convinced I was sitting in the computer room playing games. When I told her: "No, I was programming", she asked what I was programming. Of course I told her I was writing a game, as all kids learning to program were. She responded: "See! Games!" as though she'd somehow proven her point.
But, like you, I've made my career from programming and it's treated me quite well for the most part.
Same story here - my parents fought the uphill battle until they ran out of steam to try and get me to do anything else, but my career has basically shut them up on that now
It’s very easy for the parents to manipulate the child into thinking it’s their own idea, whether through guilt or simply not knowing any better. The parents are in a much more powerful position psychologically and mentally. So even if you don’t force them beyond their immediate will you could be doing something negatively.
I think the best way to decide what’s too much is to think about whether or not the child will, 20 years from now, write a blog post shaming and exposing their abuse inflicted upon them.
Clarification: I‘m talking about self-actualization & leisure time here, not chores.
> What is a healthy amount of pushing vs too much?
There is no healthy amount of pushing, period. If you stop applying pressure, children will find their own thing, and that’s the best outcome for them. Just make sure they know the possibilities of what they could do.
What would you have liked to do instead of learning piano? Did you need pressure from your parents to have those ideas?
I asked my parents for a keyboard. My mother said that I‘d need to learn piano first - so I agreed to take lessons instead. 8 years later, I gave up on piano lessons, with no keyboard in sight. Haven’t touched the piano since. I wonder what would’ve happened if they had just bought me that cheap keyboard instead.
That's not true. I never pushed my kids and now that they are adults they are angry with my for not pushing them. For example, "Why didn't you make us play sports?" Well, if you had told me you wanted to play sports I would have supported you, but you never said anything. It turns out that kids don't really know have the maturity to do things unless pushed or encouraged by parents. Who knew?
Well, your kids are wrong. They imagine enjoying all the benefits in the present, while all the costs are already in the past so they don't properly account for them.
It's just confused thinking on their part (very common, judging by some of the comments here).
(All of this is about "pushing" or "forcing", not about "encouraging", which I believe to be very different).
Is it that they weren’t pushed to do sports, or is it that they were never given the opportunity to try it?
IMO, my role as a parent is to expose my kids to as many things as I can. If the like it, I give them more, if they don’t, then we move on to something else.
> Is it that they weren’t pushed to do sports, or is it that they were never given the opportunity to try it?
I think ultimately the problem is that the child has the first-hand knowledge of their own experience, but not the mature perspective of age; and the adult has the mature perspective of age, but not the first-hand knowledge of the child's experience.
I have a toddler. Sometimes he knows he's tired needs to sleep; sometimes he needs to sleep but he refuses to accept that; sometimes he knows that he's not tired and won't be able to sleep.
I know that he often gets tired around a certain time, and that he often refuses to accept that he actually needs sleep.
So sometimes when he refuses sleep, I insist, and then he conks out immediately. I was right: my greater perspective as an adult was more accurate his immediate experience of wanting to stay awake.
But sometimes when he refuses to sleep, and I insist, he spends the next two hours tossing & turning and not being able to sleep. He was right: his personal experience of not being at all tired outweighed my greater perspective as a parent that he's normally tired at the time.
Neither one of us has enough information to make an informed decision on our own.
I think something similar happens with children. Children don't really know the potential reward of putting up with the grind of practicing for years, or the regret as an adult of missing out on those skills. But if it's excruciatingly painful, they certainly know it.
Adults know the potential reward of putting in the time, but they don't know the child's experience. So, when a child balks, is it because they're just facing the normal barrier of effort that everyone faces? Or are they really experiencing something excruciatingly painful? If it's the first and you push them, they'll be glad in the end. If it's the first and you don't push them, they'll regret it. If it's the second and you push them, they'll be resentful; if it's the second and you don't push them, everyone will be happier.
Neither the child nor the parents actually has all the information required to make an accurate decision.
I agree, and I don't mean to imply that the very first mention of "I want to quit" is the right time to quit. But, as a parent, it isn't difficult to have a sense of where they fall on that spectrum. And yeah, you won't be 100% right, but such is life.
This is the right attitude. It’s how I was raised, and I can say that I’m very happy with the person I’ve become.
Kids don’t know what it is they like or don’t like. They might think they dislike something, but usually they are just afraid of the unknown. Once something is tried at least once, then they can make an informed decision.
I make my kids do sports, but let them try out different ones until they find one they like.
As a parent I had all these ideas for them - socially it can be good to be in a team sport, it's nice to have something that you're good at that you can also still do as an adult, if you move cities later its a way to meet people there so do something a lot of people do in an organized way... But we'll see what they end up with. The oldest is into (inline) skating.
I sympathize. But if you had pushed them to do anything, chances are not so high you‘d have picked the right things. You might have pushed baseball and chess on them, and they might now be angry that you didn’t make them learn to code instead. Plus there might be additional resentment because forcing humans to do something they don’t like tends to create that.
No one is saying you should push kids to do things without compromising at all. There's a wide spectrum between "leave the kid to figure out all their hobbies themselves" and "require that they do the four hobbies that you've picked for them.
I think it's absolutely healthy to push kids to a certain extent. That extent is just something that's probably different for every kid and activity, and I get that it's probably hard for a parent to figure out when to push and when to give up.
> No one is saying you should push kids to do things without compromising at all
This thread (started by irjustin) is about this though. And, where do you draw the line?
I‘m all for encouragement, like: „Ok young one. You had half a year of ballet lessons now. It’s a bit different than you imagined, and you’re often exhausted afterwards. You can quit anytime you want, but how about you give it another shot and see if you can rest more between drills?“
And if she still wants to quit - let her.
Even pushing baseball, they’d grow up with better physical fitness than sitting at home at day. (Assuming the kid wasn’t already active in something besides baseball)
I begged my parents for an electric guitar and they bought me one. But I didn’t enjoy my first couple of guitar lessons and my parents said “Whatever, quit.” Fast-forward my raging envy in high school at my friends shredding on stage while I could bang out a few chords.
For some reason this reminds me of maths at university - I initially hated it (and was dreadful at it) but had to do it because there was no flexibility in the course - you had to do 3 years of general engineering maths or fail the course. I eventually ended up really liking maths and focusing on more abstract and maths heavy elements of computer science.
I started practicing electric guitar at the ripe age of 20 (with a teacher I met at compulsory army service), and after 6 years of that, played in a band for five years (including a gig in front of four thousand people). My parents only ever once saw me play live - and I think that actually helped, because I never felt forced to practice (as was the case with the piano).
I have a 10 and an 8 year old, and I don't agree that kids will find their own thing. I have to apply a fair amount of pressure to get 20 minutes of reading homework on school nights. I even have to apply some pressure to get them to put their laundry in the basket and put their clean clothes away.
There are heaps of things that just aren't that fun but that are actually important.
As long as you keep your kids away from addictive things, like social media, cell phones, heavily processed foods, drugs, sex, etc, they'll probably figure things out all right. But it seems easier than ever to fall into cycles of addiction in this era, no matter where you live on earth.
So I'd say pushing kids away from those things is necessary. Beyond that, I'm not so sure.
Yeah, I think this gets at something important. If the options are homework, reading a book, building something, or playing Fortnight, 90% of kids are going to pick the video game. If most of the time they only have the first three options, finding a better balance is going to be easier.
Forcing children to do one particular thing (above and beyond what is required to survive in this cruel world) is probably bad. Making sure the options they have to choose from are healthy, non-addictive, and engaging is probably necessary, though.
Worth noting that in car-dependent hellish suburban and rural America, video games may be the only way kids can socialize on an average weeknight, especially if they aren’t interested in sports.
It’s tricky to let your kids socialize but also keep them away from toxic platforms like TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, etc.
I recently came across Jane Nelson and positive discipline [1] which I found quite enlightening. I think we often underestimate how well kids understand the importance of things if we sit down and treat them as equals. That said sometimes everyone needs a push, but I think it is important not to push something that is not being enjoyed at all just because "it is good for you".
Kids have to be pushed to clean up after themselves, to be polite, to mind their manners. Wild children will most often eventually learn to fit in and stay there, but they will take torturous paths to get to that point whereas Stepford children are likely to look great on paper but grow up resenting the people who took away their autonomy for appearances' sake.
Neither extreme (Wild/Stepford) is a good thing, Wild Children tend to get into and cause a lot of trouble, and end up missing out on opportunities both personal and interpersonal due to their lack of grounding and inability to meet societal pressures/standards.
Stepford kids (at least in my anecdotal experience) tend to end up rebelling hard, or developing a need to hide their flaws and issues out of fear of reprisal, and sometimes end up having huge breakdowns because their fundamental emotional and developmental needs aren't being met.
Sounds like Wil was forced to be a Stepford child, and this is the consequence of that, not to mention his mother both abusing him and allowing him to be abused by other people while wringing every penny she could get out of him in the process. That's pretty shitty.
Sorry for that, I also commented on your initial reply to point out my edit. I agree with you about chores. There seem to be cultures who have it easier in that regard (kids derive purpose from doing chores), but those cultures have a totally different day to day life.
I agree. I was under the impression that this thread is about self-actualization, and not about chores. But I see how my comment can leave the impression of a wider scope, so I added a clarification at the top.
I wish my parents had pushed me to practice piano. They subjected me to lessons for almost 2 years, and I didn't mind (although the 30 minute drive each way to the teacher's house sucked.) However, between lessons instead of practicing I would just fck off and improvise and try to teach myself popular songs instead of actually practicing, and I'm not talking about hours each day either, maybe more like a few minutes. Which meant it was all a collossal waste of time and money.
"I would just fck off and improvise and try to teach myself popular songs instead of actually practicing"
I did the exact same thing, except now I'm a skilled keyboardist (and multi-instrumentalist) who gets paid for gigs. I still spend most of my time fucking around and improvising. Every bit of theory I discovered through fucking around and just exploring freely. I never do scales: I just pick a key and start improvising.
If my parents had pushed me to 'actually practice', I would have rebelled and quit altogether. They did for a couple of years. And I did quit. Fortunately, I found my way back to it, on my own terms, because I simply loved playing instruments -- but I loved doing it on my own terms, not someone else's.
The frank truth is that some people really like playing instruments, and some are just 'meh' about it. Those who have a tendency to enjoy playing an instrument just need to have access to one -- and then they'll find their way. On the other hand, if a child is 'meh' about an instrument, is it really worth punishing and forcing them through all of it? What's the goddamn point? Isn't life to be enjoyed? Is it really just a series of skills to stoically master?
Our daughters both play instruments and they only get to choose each semester how much teaching they want to do or if they want to play in orchestras or ensembles. But once they choose so they cannot stop practicing for their ensemble concert. Interestingly while there is a lot of friction involved to get them to practice at times they are always very proud and happy for their performance and want to do it again. The most draconian measure we apply is not letting them use electronic media.
Same story here. The piano teacher refused to teach me in the end.
That said, as a result I can busk a bit, and have come to realise that physical tasks to be done in a repeatable way are outside my ability. So the world has not lost a great pianist.
Surprised to read this. There have been many well-documented cases of children not wanting to learn math, science, history, etc, or go outside for exercise, where the parents denied their children’s agency and forced them to do so. Long-term studies indicate a tendency towards positive outcomes.
I would be interested in those studies, if you can point me to them (article name would suffice). It would be great if those studies not only included outcome scores (force a child to learn math and they will improve in math, duh), but also anxiety scores and other wellbeing parameters.
Some amount of external pressure may help you try something that's slightly difficult and not the most obvious instant gratification available.
The main thing is to not chase some dumb good-parenting metric but to give your kid suitable obstacles so she can experience overcoming them and feel success and gain self-confidence. That's what parenting is all about: the little push that helps kids reach their potential. Easier said than done of course.
I agree though that if that does not stay in the fun zone, the outcome will most likely be bad. Especially if there is some vicarious competition in the parent's head.
I wish my parents had pushed me more sometimes. Piano is one of those things; I quit after a year and a half or so, and my parents let me without pushing me to try harder to stick with it. Now, as an adult, over 30 years later, I really wish I'd kept taking lessons as a kid.
“What is a healthy amount of pushing vs too much?” Is a great question.
Some friends and I had fairly negative experiences with childhood activities (for me sports, for them music). However, as we reflect on them as adults we are quite happy that we were pushed into uncomfortable scenarios and “forced” to learn life long skills. Indeed, some of my friends argue that they wish they were pushed a bit harder.
All that being said, the amount of “pushing” my friends and I experienced does not seem be irregular (like in the article). It does lead me to believe there is some “okay” amount of pushing. Does anyone have perspective on where they draw the line?
Pushing wasn't the problem here, at least not the primary one. It was a lack of love, understanding, and support from parents. He didn't feel heard, he didn't feel loved. His mother made it clear what her priority was, and it wasn't him. Will probably could have been an actor and had a loving supportive mother. At least it's possible.
Plenty of children benefit from hard work with their families. When the relationships are toxic then that time becomes toxic probably along with the activity. When there's love, they may not do that thing forever, but they will not hate it like this.
With my children, I encourage exploration of their skills, desires, and I've started them on paths towards lifelong careers from youngish ages (12-13). Which includes learning skills and testing things out. But I keep a keen ear open to their desires and an eye on their actual aptitudes and try really hard to match them up with useful work that they will like long term. I also try not to push so hard I kill the joy in the exploration and discovery while trying to keep expectations up and providing on-level material for them to level up at their own pace.
Children want expectations. They need expectations. Just also fill their lives with love — especially active love involving your time and attention. So that they thoroughly know that they are loved and valued well above and beyond any of these things or activities, and it will generally go well.
I was made to study music (piano, singing, solfeggio) growing up. Basically robbed me of childhood - no free time (classes 6 days a week), no friends, constant pressure to do something I didn't want to. At 8th grade a just said I'm not going anymore and mom gave up.
My kids are now involved in a lot of extracurriculars, including piano, but I'm trying to make sure they have life outside of school and activities. I think it's not all bad, it's a matter of balance you need to find as a parent.
> What is a healthy amount of pushing vs too much?
I think that's really hard to answer. I was in a sort of opposite situation as you were as a kid. My sister and I started piano lessons when I was 7 or 8 years old. They went on for a year and a half or so. Neither of us liked practicing. Our mom told us if we didn't practice, we wouldn't have lessons anymore. So... we didn't have lessons anymore. Today, I really wish I could play, and wish my parents had pushed us harder to stick with the lessons.
But I could very easily see it going the other way (if not for piano, than for something else), with my sister and I being forced to do something we hated. So yeah, really hard to figure out where that balance is.
In contrast, just a couple years later I started playing trumpet in school, and did stick with that, at least through college. I was quite good at it (not really to the point I could play professionally, but good enough to score well in local and regional amateur competitions). But it's kinda hard to play a loud brass instrument in apartment and condo buildings without making some angry neighbors. It's another reason why I wish I could play piano, since electric ones have volume controls and headphone jacks.
Of course, obviously taking piano lessons is a much much much much more minor thing than being forced to be a child star and contemplating suicide...
I'm the opposite (although I also watched Star Trek in my youth). My (Western) parents also got me to learn music, and I loved it. Still do. Not that I'm good: I've reached some intermediate difficulty level, but I really enjoy playing the classics, and discovering new music, as well as composing and mucking around with a computer and its incredible sound capabilities. Many like me wouldn't have found the wonderful gift of music, or would have found it very late in life if it hadn't been for our parents, so in a sense, I'm grateful for your offer.
I do agree that one should stop making children do things once it's become obvious that they don't enjoy it. 12 years is too long.
> Wow Will was such a part of my childhood watching Star Trek. Obviously, he didn't appear often but he was memorable simply because there were so few people as young as him on the show.
Yeah, he's 5 years older than me, but I remember watching that show and daydreaming about how cool it would be to live on the Enterprise and how I would be best friends with Wesley Crusher.
I know adults loved to rag on the character and (re-watching it as an adult) I can see where some of the criticism of how he was written comes from. But there were so many parts of that show that have not aged well, and the "token genius kid" is still one of the least annoying to me.
I think a problem with Wesley is he seems to have undeveloped social skills for his age (possibly due to a lack of peers his own age to interact with) but the lack of social skills doesn't seem to be intentional on the part of the writers, Wesley is just oddly written.
As someone who struggled with socializing in school I think Wesley was a poor role model.
As an adult rewatching it I don't care, I would just acknowledge how weird/ alien the human characters on the enterprise act.
That's something me and my wife struggle with now that we have a child. We both wish we had been pushed more when it comes to music lessons. So, we think we will try to get him to learn piano or an other instrument (except violin). However, we will most likely put a time limit, if after 3 years he still doesn't really like it, he can give it up.
The idea, is that I think that for certain things like music, it only really become enjoyable once one has developed a certain amount of competence. So 3 years mean having enough basics so that our son can decide if he likes it or not.
My wife had this idea that we had our kids learn less-popular instruments. Viola instead of violin, harpsichord instead of piano. Playing piano is super competetive, you could put a lot of effort into it and still there are so many better players than you. In comparison the local harpsichord community is very happy to have a new member, everybody is supportive and it is much easier for the kids.
Charles Rosen relayed this wonderful anecdote about the great musicologist Oliver Strunk (son of the William Strunk of Strunk & White fame);
>His interests ranged over almost the whole of music, although his appreciation of the modern period may not have gone beyond Bartok. I remember he once told me that he used to own a harpsichord but had exchanged it for a piano, and when I asked why, he said that it was too difficult to sight-read the tone poems of Strauss at the harpsichord.
The piano used to be the gateway to all sorts of music, both vocal, orchestral and chamber, via transcriptions. And enthusiasts would get to know pieces that are performed in concert by sight reading it on their piano at home beforehand. The harpsichord is less versatile than the piano in this regard.
But then again the primary way of getting to know new music nowadays has been through recordings, and this has been the case for a very long time, so the practical deficiencies of the harpsichord compared to the piano may be less noticeable now. On the other hand, learning a continuo instrument like the harpsichord invariably involves some sort of training in improvised thoroughbass, which is an extremely valuable skill that is not found among pianists, so I think it's a pretty good choice in the end after all.
That's a good idea... One reason I mentioned piano is that as an adult I finally decided to learn piano and I guess at a young age seeing his dad try to also learn the same instrument might be more motivating...
I do love the sound of harpsichord though :) But getting one at home is much harder whereas electronic pianos with good weighted keys are cheap and don't take so much space.
I'm not a parent, but I would be concerned about doing anything that's likely to get the kid branded a weirdo, particularly when they reach the social gauntlet of American middle school and high school (if that's applicable for you). I suppose I'm particularly sensitive to that because my disability (partial blindness) made me an attractive choice for other kids to pick on, and nobody chose that for me.
I think another problem is that lessons focus on "songs" that children don't like. I bet if a kid saw someone playing their favorite pop song on the piano they'd be all over it, specially if it's something like a simple melody they could learn in a day or two. It's just about sparking the interest.
> What is a healthy amount of pushing vs too much?
David Epstein somewhat tackles this question in Range[0]. The issue come down to the type of 'learning environment' of the activity you are trying to get the kid into.
'Kind Learning Environments' are ones like golf or chess. The rules are clear, the feedback is rapid, standings are knowable, and the skills are uniform. For Kind learning environments, you just grind out the hours. Here you can use Gladwell's 10,000 hours to shine.
'Unkind Learning Environments' are ones like tennis, business, or poker. The rules are murky, the feedback is delayed, standings are at time undiscernible, and the skills are varied. For unkind learning environments, you have to graze on a lot of other disciplines to shine. Just grinding out the hours won't result in great results.
Epstein specifically uses Ospedale della Pietà as an example of greatness in music. He says that concert musicians use the learning styles of Kind environments, while jazz musicians use Unkind styles. A great union of the Kind and Unkind was in Venice at Ospedale della Pietà where female orphans became some of the best classical musicians in history due to the unique factors at the orphanage.
So the answer, per Epstein, to your question is that it depends (sorry!).
Do you want an orchestra music playing child? Use the Kind learning environment techniques of grinding away 10,000 hours.
Do you want a more jazz music playing child? Use the Unkind learning techniques of many other disciplines and getting through the 10,000 hours in fits and spurts.
Epstein's book goes into waaaay better detail than my comment's haphazard and poorly remembered accounting. If you're serious about the question, I'd buy it and read it.
Thank you for the book recommendation. I haven’t read it yet, but from the description and your comment, it seems like it puts its finger right on something I’ve contemplated for years.
The general ability to excel in a lot of different things, because of exposure to a variety of things, without necessarily being a 10,000 hour master in any of them, goes a long way. Particularly, being able to combine multiple aspects from multiple disciplines to solve a problem from a different perspective.
Edit: To just expand my thoughts a bit further, I think it comes down to sometimes “you don’t know what you don’t know.” Being exposed to more things goes a long way.
a kid only wants to play video game all life, and what does he know what he wants anyway. I believe kids can learn anything, can go any direction without problem. The only issue is the teacher. A good teacher will make a kid enjoy something, a bad teacher will make a kid hate something. That's the only difference. A lot people are interested in the outcome, and does not spend too much time thinking about the process, that's the problem.
We encourage our kids to do sport and music, but they choose which ones (and have both changed as they get older) and we stop if they are not enjoying it or getting something out of it. We are also careful about what teachers/schools they go to to avoid ones that are mills for competitions etc. some teachers are as bad as over competitive parents.
The important thing is to encourage but listen to them. And to make it clear that they can just do it for fun.
My curse was being good at pretty much anything I tried my hand at - and it lead my parents to constantly have enormous expectations of me. If I didn’t win the national competition for X, I was a miserable failure, and what would the other children and parents think. This even extended to ridiculous stuff like having me eat “advanced foods for his age”. Constant expectations of precociousness… which I was all too happy to fulfil. I wanted my eternally miserable mother to be happy.
This was my entire childhood. If I wasn’t constantly overachieving, there were threats of having me institutionalised (I never really understood the threat, given that I was already being raised at boarding school, how much worse could an asylum be?), actual privations (I came second in the year in some exams once because I had to do them from bed with bronchitis, and went home at the end of term to find my bedroom had been turned into a parlour), and the general gaslighting (Mr Hart is a very nice man, he would never do that (he is now in prison)) of childhood.
It was my mother, mainly, trying to make her own stunted and valueless life feel worthwhile. I forgive her, for she wasn’t much more than a child herself, and came from a small and terror-ridden world in the poverty of the decaying Scottish industrial heartland. She knew not what she did. She married a yuppie, an 80’s guy of the 70’s, and clambered onwards and upwards, putting on airs and graces you’d never think came from a girl who grew up in a trailer on a marsh next to a military base.
I recall testing this hypothesis, that it was about her, not me, aged 11, when I was Shanghai’d into doing a production with the Chicago lyric - she’d been pimping me out as a boy soprano with an English accent in Chicagoland, and crap did it sell. I decided to not tell her. Kept it completely under wraps while I rehearsed, told her I was throwing rocks at birds or something to explain the time, which was far more believable. Show rolls around. She’s there, at the premiere, because she has to be seen at all of this stuff, always. She was FURIOUS - I don’t remember a more severe beating from my father - that I had shamed her in such a way, that I had let her down so richly. The thing she was upset about, of course, is that I’d made it rather hard for her to take the credit, as she’d had literally zero involvement and everyone knew it.
We left Chicago a few months on, and I was removed from the school that had helped me go behind her back.
I feel for Wil. It’s a tough thing to live with, the anger, the absolute fucking outrage at what was done to you, balanced with the fact that whether you like it or not you still love these damaged shitheads, and your seemingly never ending quest for understanding why.
I understood, only in my late 30’s, the past few years, that none of it was my fault. I still haven’t entirely internalised that, maybe never will, but finding peace with my mother as just being the not terribly worldly or foresightful person that she is. I pity her hollowed out little life of gin and gardeners, but if it’s her crowning achievement, so be it, that’s her life to ruin. I got mine, mostly, back.
As I have young children of my own today, I'm faced with these questions. What is a healthy amount of pushing vs too much?
What about not at all? The only thing they need to be good, not even best, is the studies that will enable them to work. Just help them if they're falling behind. Os support them if they seem to have a passion for something in particular. But otherwise, let them have a life.
I wrote about this in a sibling comment to yours, but I think kids should be pushed at least some amount. I wish I could play piano today, but I was too lazy/unfocused to practice as a kid, and so my mom canceled my lessons and I never learned. It's something I wish my mom had pushed me to do back then.
Kids don't always know what's best for them, and they will sometimes take short-term satisfaction (not having to endure the monotony of deliberate practice) at the expense of long-term satisfaction (being able to play well after a time).
That's not to say parents should always force the issue. Certainly sometimes the kid really is expressing a preference that should be honored. But not always.
Do you realize you can still learn to play? Maybe not to reach a professional level, but enough to enjoy yourself.
I didn't "push" my son. I did teach him myself what I knew, for years. He can play with both hands and sing along. We visited one nearby conservatory where one of his friends was going to study and talk with some teachers. He finally decided to pass.
Yes, he's been playing much more Minecraft than piano since then. But now he's finished his second Maths year with flying colors and we're both happy ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Sad to hear this all around. This also brought back memories of me being required to play piano growing up. I hated piano, performing (recitals), playing in general. I was terrrribbleee (still am) and was put up in lessons for 12 years. I fought tooth and nail as I got older and eventually was so bad my parents stopped at 16.
Music is a very "asian" or "chinese" thing to put your child through. As well as being good academically. This part of my life was a sore spot, but not even close Will's situation.
As I have young children of my own today, I'm faced with these questions. What is a healthy amount of pushing vs too much? I don't need my kid to be the best at anything - I just don't want them to be lost/dead-in-the-water or unable to fend for themselves.