(But ahem for the record and probably to everyone’s dismay, I am not certain I’d pick happiness for the kid over success. It depends on what kind of success we’re talking about though. Ultimately, though, I don’t see it as my role to “pick a fate” for my kid–rather, it’s to equip him to be able to do a good job making such choices on his own later on. And what I’m afraid of here is that letting him pursue something he’s demonstrably terrible at is not going to do him any favors when it comes to knowing how to decide what to pursue. I do not think a person should make decisions like this based just on what they enjoy. I think the decision as to what to pursue should include what the decider enjoys together with other factors.)
The dilemma I face is much more benign than that–a kid who’s happy doing something he’s really bad at, and a kid who’s happy doing something he’s really good at.
No. The WORLD might be a better place in some respects, but people would be a lot less happy if the only people who were allowed to sing were the people who were good at it, if you could only dance if you were capable of joining the Bolshoi and if no one played bar ball because either you were professional baseball caliber or you hung up your cleats.
Maybe, but by forbidding him from doing something he loves just because he’s not very good at it you’re teaching him that only things at which you excel are worth pursing. Not many people excel at ANYTHING when they first try it. I’m going to join the chorus of if he loves it let him be.
If you’re searching for a comment on his dancing when he’s looking for feedback try “Wow buddy you are really enjoying that”
Unless you think the kid is going to try to turn this “he sucks at it but enjoys it” activity into a career path I say let the kid have fun. For that matter I think its a good life lesson that it is actually is okay to suck at some things.
Over the years I’ve had spent much time pursuing hobbies and its always bugged me how a decent fraction of mature adults seem to either be apologizing for not being very good at something and some others that seem to think less of those folks that are not so good at it as they are.
Dude, it’s a six year old. OF COURSE he sucks. This conversation kind of reminds me of Maddox’s page making fun of children’s artwork. Most of the time nobody points it out, but the truth is that six year olds are basically shitty at everything they do, because they’re still in the process of learning how to do everything.
Let him enjoy it and don’t worry about how bad it is. He will get better if he keeps practicing and by the time he is old enough to know if he’s good or not he probably really will be at least decent at it even if he is never one of the greatest ones. Some people are naturally more skilled than others, but with these kinds of skills it’s possible to become better or there wouldn’t be lessons in the first place.
Is your memory of things that you were forced to do despite a lack of interest and ability or things you wanted to do despite a lack of ability? Because this is clearly the latter.
One of them involves dancing in fact–though in my case my desire to dance wasn’t the usual visceral human desire to dance which apparently I’ve discovered everyone has but me, but rather, just a desire to overcome the embarrasing handicap I seemed to be saddled with when it came to dancing. It didn’t work.
So yeah, like I said, there are surely painful memories of my own I’m mixing into this business…
THEY’RE ALL GOING TO LAUGH AT HIM!
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ETA: The other main painful memory is acting. God I wanted (and you know what? Still want!) to be good at acting. That seems like such a perfectly incredibly wonderful thing to be able to do.
And I tried it for all four years of high school.
And it was embarrasing. Just hilarious for me to even try.
If your son had another love that he was good at, maybe it would be appropriate to softly direct his efforts there. For instance, if he had to choose between dance lessons and swimming - and he tore up the pool. Is that the case? Is there something he loves and IS good at that you’d rather see him do.
AND keep in mind that if what he loves and is good at is something cerebral, you need to continue to encourage the physical stuff he isn’t good at. Because my clumsy non-atheletic daughter can now walk across a balance beam - and developing balance and coordination is a life skill as much as being able to add and subtract is.
My son is a GOOD baseball player. At 12 he throws a 60 MPH fast ball down the middle of the plate. Good control, good speed, good reflexes. He hits for average and power. Is a darn good infielder. He isn’t a GREAT baseball player, they aren’t scouting him, but he is really good.
He is a bad reader. I have to chase him with a book to get him to read.
Should I have him give up reading because he isn’t good at it?
I’m 49 and restarting playing guitar yet again. I’ll never be good. I hope someday to earn a dollar busking. It’s still fun when I’m playing, despite the sisyphean nature of my guitar playing.
I still have hopes of learning a martial art mo’ betta’.
Based on what you said, I’m not sure I’d answer in the negative. It depends (in my opinion) on whether he’s meeting a certain minimum of skill in reading. Past that, I wouldn’t try to force reading on a kid who clearly doesn’t enjoy it.
What if he loved it but I for some reason thought he was never going to be good at it? (That’d be more like what I was talking about in the OP.) I guess by my lights I ought to feel an impulse to nudge him into other pursuits… and probably the only reason I don’t is because I value reading and don’t value dancing. So there’s that…
Except now he has to read 1100 pages a tri in order to pass English class. So all of that “well, you really aren’t very good at it, we won’t make you do it” is now biting him in the butt.
Likewise, your son is going to have to develop some basic physical skills - he doesn’t have to be good at them, but if you think that having him avoid the shame of being bad at dancing at six is going to avoid the shame of not being able to run without tripping over his feet in middle school, or dodge in dodge ball - have him make the mistakes now in something physical - he’ll never be great, but developing the competence in getting his body to move the way he wants - more or less - will serve him well in middle school.
I think about how many times in life I’ve been self concious about this or that and how that has negatively impacted my life or made things more stressful than they need to be or I was worrying about what others would think about things that don’t matter for shit. And I am sure I aint the only one like that.
I think being crappy at something, knowing you are crappy at it, and not worrying about it too much because its something that doesnt really matter is a life skill more of us could use.
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