Sound of Talent
My wife has finally acknowledged that Smallsteps probably has a bit of a musical gift, but it took the speed at which the piano teacher is advancing, to trigger her. Of course, it is not wise to get too far ahead with these things with a seven year old, as talented or not, her overall skill still depends on whether she maintains enough interest long-term to keep practicing, keep trying and pushing.
It was interesting talking with colleagues the other day about talent and skills, and the genetics behind these things, as most people tend to believe that they have some inherited talent of some kind in their family. This might be true, but it seems many also feel that the talent skipped them, or they weren't able to take advantage of it for some reason.
For instance, music runs in my family on both sides, but I feel that it has skipped me because I didn't have the opportunity to practice, or I wasn't forced to practice. When I was seven I had a couple piano lessons, but unlike my brothers, my parents didn't make me go, so when I was given the opportunity to stop, I did.
Kids make stupid decisions.
Which is why kids shouldn't be making a lot of the decisions for themselves at that age, and why parents should be parents and do a little bit of "forcing" or at least, some manipulation and some boundaries. It is great when kids are able to find something that they love and the parents can just support it, but it isn't always that easy for some children to find these things, and they can't tease apart the difference between the value of doing something right now, and the value of having a skill in the future.
Kids by nature make short-term decisions, because they don't have the experience to understand the long-term consequences of their behavior. In many ways, this is what keeps them curious and somewhat fearless, but it can also come at a cost to their future, when they make decisions that once the opportunity is missed young, it is almost impossible to get it back. And, some of these talents and the skills that are developed in childhood, are of the kind that we appreciate having in adulthood.
What do you wish you had practiced a lot more as a kid?
Of course, there is a difference between supporting a child to improve on talents and learn skills and, living vicariously through children. For instance in Finland, there are a lot of parents who force their children into playing ice hockey for years, even though the child might not be talented, skilled, or interested. But, the parent dreams of having a star player in the family, and all the accoutrements that come with it - money.
I don't want my daughter to be a star at really anything, unless she really wants to apply herself into building a skill. However, I do believe there is a life value in a person having the feeling that they are very good at something, even if it is something that doesn't make money, or anyone else cares about. This could be because I don't think I have ever had that feeling, where I feel confident in a certain ability. The closest I have gotten I suppose, is my skill back in the day playing Ghost Recon, a first person shooter - that was something that I knew I was good at, to the point that it was incredibly boring.
I knew it was pointless too.
Smallsteps can spend an hour or more, just sitting at the piano, tapping away at the keys, making up new songs, or just playing the ones she has already learned and wants to improve. She wakes up in the morning on weekends, and plays some piano for a little while, before she will go near the television and watch cartoons. She just enjoys it. And I think that if she keeps it up, she will take joy from it for years to come, as she will get that satisfying feeling of being creative, and being in flow.
Flow requires a mix of skill tempered by challenge, where there is a bit of a reach to be able to test the skill level. But, I wonder what happens when we don't have very high creative skills, or physical skills at all, and then what will we do for flow? Is that is what people are getting out of the endless scroll? Is that constant stream of largely useless and unactionable content feeding that void for flow?
Tomorrow morning, a piano tuner is coming for a much needed service. With the extreme changes in temperatures we have had inside, the piano sounds very sick indeed. Thankfully, Smallsteps' piano lessons are not here, and she gets to hear the sounds of a proper instrument. However, I am curious to see what she does tomorrow evening once she is home from school, and whether she will do what she did the first time she ever sat at a piano when she was three - just explore the new sounds.
Taraz
[ Gen1: Hive ]
While I have nothing from childhood, writing has become my instrument as an adult.
I think it is just matter of time :) Most parents of our generation could supplied us just the basic things of life. Even, they were not that capable of directing their children into a field or branch.
She will find her way - I will just try to nudge her into giving it a solid attempt.
If little Smallsteps has a talent for music, you'll know in about three years' time. I always liked the piano, but for purely economic reasons I couldn't dedicate myself to it; I ended up acquiring skills with the guitar. I don't have any known links to music in my family tree, but from an early age I enjoyed learning how to play the stave, “perhaps because of the link with my love of mathematics”.
If it was the price of the piano, it has been interesting lately as they are incredibly cheap (about 50€-100€)now here. Seems either people don't want a real one (choosing digital), or they don't have the room. Ours is from her aunt.
I would imagine it is a fair number of people who regret quitting something when they were younger. Probably far greater than the number of people who are happy they did. Especially when their minds are more elastic vs when they are old like me and keep putting off trying to learn guitar.
I haven't really heard of people saying "I'm glad I quit playing...." - have you?
Exactly my point!
A really important thing the fact about making some decisions for kids. The responsibility of many things falls on parents to keep them going with some relevant things in life. Music is an interesting skill to develop. Like any other, it only gets better if you practice. And having the time to develop particular skills in the whole spectrum of music is important. Nothing is gained from skipping steps there.
The "sick" piano made me laugh hard. Poor thing! With the temperatures is necessary to keep it tuned. And I think also humidity is an important factor with the cold weather.
You play guitar, right?
I feel like the people who spend the time learning to plan an instrument very well, end up having some kind of slightly different perspective on life. It is like knowing a new language.
Music is a language on its own. It has a writing system and a way to express it as well.
I play a kind of guitar. But I also play other instruments and it doesn't matter if you know one, you always need to go from the basic things up to the most difficult ones of each new instrument you want to play. I think it gives you a perspective on commitment because it isn't easy and it takes lots of time to get good.
If a child has a skill he/she loves, parents should take it up from there. Regardless, I feel a child should be actively learning a skill, it would go a long way for them in the future.
I also do understand that feeling - the desire to have a skill or talent that you could use as a morale booster. Sometimes it could seem as though a piece of your life is missing or you constantly get flooded with memories of regret. Well, if we never had that opportunity, I feel we should do everything possible to ensure our children don't end up with the same regret.
I love what you're doing for small steps,keep it up!
I think that having a skill that can be used alone, is also a huge support mechanism. Feeling bad, and just sitting down on an instrument, carving some wood, painting a picture - it is healing.
On the flipside of that you do have the kids who are at least somewhat talented at something but are or may end up deeply resentful of their parents for forcing it and destroying their enjoyment of it.
Statistically insignificantly I'm remembering two specific incidents (one involving art and the other sport) where the parents (probably with the best of intentions) forced/pushed their kids in their talent areas (they were actually incredible) to the point where the kids burnt out and straight up quit completely.
I think the art kid did start drawing again eventually but I don't know if sport kid ever went back to their sport.
I wish my parents hadn't been given straight up wrong information when I was a kid (apparently it's not uncommon for multilingual kids to take a bit longer to start talking as they have more languages to process and the violently wrong conclusion drawn from this at the time was that it was a developmental delay) and taught sibling dearest and I at least some of the languages they know (particularly Mum, I think Dad knows three but Mum seems to know about seven if you count distinct dialects as separate languages) when we were that young.
Because they followed the stupid advice to teach only one language during language development and any subsequent languages afterwards, I got asked when I was 6 or 7 maybe (I don't remember exactly when, just that I was tiny) if I wanted to go to Malay School. I hated school (bored out of my skull, had an infinite amount of infinitely better things I could have been doing instead) so of course I straight up said no, I was absolutely not under any circumstances wasting another day in a school type environment.
Stupid mistake from a stupid kid on my part because obvioiusly I had no way of knowing it would be useful later and perhaps stupid parenting mistake on my mum's part for not forcing it but she probably had an infinite amount of infinitely better things to do than fight about that too.
Hope smallsteps has an amazing music teacher who is able to keep her interested long term :D (don't even have to worry about her getting encouragement from her parents XD)
You probably see some of that in gymnastics. The "hockey parents" here can be quite extreme at times. There is a difference between being supportive, and being aggressive - When I played sport as a kid (hockey) there were some aggressive parents.
The language thing annoys me!!
My parents were a bit the same, but lazier - they didn't teach us because "we are in Australia, we only need English" - the bad information they had was similar, that the "lag" in learning meant development issues - but it actually goes the other way.
Malay school??
I have never heard of such a thing - and my dad was from Malaysia! :D
Looking back, do you think it was because the school just didn't challenge you, or was it because you weren't interested in "school" at all?
And yeah - so far the teacher has been very supportive- and since the lessons are at her home, we know where she lives.... ;D
Not so much at our club fortunately (happens but not common).
Same when the boys played footy a hundred billion years ago. Like calm down it's a freaking Auskick game x_x the umpire is literally 12-13 you're not "helping them get used to" anything you're just making pathetic excuses to justify your crappy behaviour.
Yeh that's also pretty terrible -_-
while people should definitely do their best to acclimatise to the culture of any place they're staying I think it's always good to maintain their language and the good bits of their culture, and also I'm extremely anti-colonialism so any natural language being the global dominant one will never, ever be acceptable to me
I'm pretty sure it's only a thing here XD (and maybe in other countries where the language isn't native) I don't know if you learn other stuff as well but I know it was mostly to learn the language. There was also a Chinese school. I know there's a Japanese School somewhere around here and there's probably other language ones around the place too.
It was mostly deep resentment at being forced to pay attention to/"waste" time on things I didn't have any interest in or see the relevance of (that hasn't actually changed at all XD).
Then I went to uni and while I still didn't do that great (I just don't have an academically inclined brain) I really enjoyed it, the more focused courses meant even the less interesting units were at least somewhat relevant.
I still remember one of the first lectures though in which the lecturer basically said to forget a lot of the stuff we learned in high school as we were going to learn how to do it properly and that was the realisation that I felt I had literally wasted the 12 years of my life in school. Didn't do great for the still high resentment levels XD
I also feel like that contributes to why a lot of young people have such atrocious work ethic.
My sisters were forced to play piano, while I wasn't. They performed some recitals in school, but they eventually stopped playing once they reached high school. I agree that the person needs to have the motivation and will to continue pursuing something. Because if it is lacking, then they will eventually stop anyways. Since your daughter seems to have a gift, I hope she doesn't lose the enjoyment of playing.
Do they still play sometimes now? One of the other reasons I wish I had played as a kid, was that I would be able to also play with my daughter - teach her a song, or play while she sings. I think it would be a nice way to share experience.
Not so much now. My sister enrolled her daughter to play piano, and it is a good bonding experience for them. I have been telling her to get back to playing so they can play together, but it seems my niece just likes to play solo for now haha
It's never too late. You can still learn to play, especially now that your daughter is taking lessons. You can learn together.
The truth in the saying that 'whatever one leaves, leaves him' shouldn't be over emphasized.
And children on the other hand learn really fast, should they develop passion and see reasons why they should, they'll fall in love with learning.
It is hard these days, as there are so many distractions put in front of kids that are more exciting than actually learning something - until later.
I love the idea of nurturing a child's talents and the importance of providing opportunities for their growth.. your support and guidance will pave the way for her musical journey, this is a clear truth.
Looking forward to hearing about her experience with the piano tuner and her continued exploration of music.
It was interesting, as the tuner had her "test" the piano at times for him, to see how it was going. She enjoyed being part of the process. (She was ill and at home from school today).
To me, the best part of kids willing to keep practicing a musical instrument or a sport is their determination. It is hard to find determination at young ages, especially now that there are so many digital distractions around them. I agree we have to "force" a little bit as parents, but at the end of the day, they will decide on their own.
I believe you do, it is just that you probably do not feel it. Most of us are quite experts on those things we have spent hundreds of hours working or studying. Compared to 95% of the population, your knowledge of crypto space is quite deep. Of course, many have a bigger knowledge in terms of coding and other W3 areas, but your overall understanding of how this "new value internet" works is quite deep from all your experience. You may not feel it now, but as years go by, this knowledge will be more and more valuable for most of our daily lives and those around us will realize how important this knowledge is, especially when the world macroeconomy starts to flip into crypto.
Determination, resilience, commitment - they are all related, aren't they? I wonder if it is harder to build a "work ethic" in later life, if it wasn't there in early life.
It is a good point about the crypto space value - I forget that compared to most people, I am an expert! :D Definitely not in the average of the cryptosphere, but it is like being a mathematician at NASA - all are better at math than the average person not at NASA :)
Yep, NASA is just a tiny group of people compared to the rest of the world population, that's the point.
Plus, being a great mathematician does not automatically qualify you for being great at educating others about math.
It takes a child to do what he or she loves even though it will just be out of play and not taking it seriously. It takes a good parent to be able to recognize the interest of his or her child so as to know how to help her improve
I think a lot of parents will see an interest, but it is hard to support an interest in the child at times. It takes effort, and time away from other things.
I don't think there's any surprises that she has talent as she clearly takes after others in her family.
She is doing really well at the piano so far! It is pretty amazing really, considering she has only had a couple lessons.
Starting them young when their minds are supple is supposed to be the best way to go.
Becca 🌷
Just like you, I was dismissive of my piano lessons and quit the instrument as soon as my parents allowed me to. But thankfully, I was subjected to 7 years of lessons before I took the opportunity to opt out. I hope Smallsteps sticks with it as long as it makes her happy!
I was the oldest, and the only child in my family that learned to play an instrument. My other 3 siblings never really took to instruments at all. It is puzzling to me since both of my parents played instruments in their High School days.
My mom played the flute and my dad was a jack of many trades, playing the trombone, trumpet, and tuba. He played in a few bands during his teen years. As an adult he picked up the guitar and has been learning a few more guitar-style instruments later in life, like the ukulele, mandolin, and banjo.
Do you ever wonder how those lessons have affected your experiences with music today? Not that you have to play in order to listen, but I think those who can play, or have a deeper understanding, hear the music somewhat differently.
The tuba! What a nerd.... My granddad played the euphonium in a brass band. I remember at his 80th birthday, the entire band was in our yard playing at a party.
Don't you think it is cool that people learn instruments later in life? I feel like there is some kind of better experience value in it.
The only reason he picked up the tuba is because he could be in the marching band since the trumpet and trombone 1st seats were already taken. I think having a musical/creative outlet is a great use of time later in life. My uncle (dad's older brother) recently started learning the piano at age 73. amazing!
I absolutely think this is the case. Partly, I think it is the mathematics of it all for me, as I was always a logical math-minded kind of guy. Beat patterns, key changes, understanding what key songs are played in all affect the way we interact with music. However, with the EDM I'm listening to these days, so much of the innovation comes from modulating various sounds through different DAWs (digital audio workstations), so there is less application to my classical musical training. I wish I had the patience to learn some of the cool new technical software that empowers the EDM producers and DJs that I listen to now.
I love to play guitar but I haven't practice it . Hope it's a great time for her
What stops you from practicing?