Your child really loves to do something he's really bad at

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
81

They don’t make them because the sparkles fall off in the pool, and lame gets eaten by chlorine. I swear to god if they made them I’d buy 10. Believe me I’ve looked!!! :wink:

OP, I got your point. We’re poor and we don’t have money to spend on activities in which the children are never going to progress. I don’t have time (procrastination aside) to ferry her around for more than one thing, either. Plus, I don’t want her to realize she’s not that great at what she loves. I don’t want her rejected by others. There are many reasons I’m concerned about her getting involved in activities that she is really not that great at, and none of them have to do with personal embarrassment.

If embarrassment was an issue I wouldn’t blast the radio and sing at the top of my lungs with the car windows open during traffic on the interstate. Really.

And I assure all the other posters that I have never once expressed a single doubt about her ability to my daughter. Her teachers give her the needed advice and my only words are to practice, practice, practice. But when someone is not good at something, you can just tell.

82

Well, the fact that the OP thinks his son should stick to things he’s good. It doesn’t seem like he has a lot of faith that if his son works hard, he can improve. Yeah, he might look silly in the mean time, but I can’t imagine someone cringing in embarrassment because a six year old looks silly. If you can’t look silly when you’re six, when can you?

83

This point hits right at home, thanks for bringing it to my attention.

84

But when the kid is 6 years old and it’s an activity that you yourself don’t do, are you really in a position to know if the kid is any good or that he or she will never progress? You aren’t necessarily able to make that determination fairly, especially since you have a financial interest in whether or not the kid continues.

The kid enjoys it. In fact, he loves dancing. Why isn’t that good enough? How many of us have a passion that we are free to indulge in? He’s SIX. If you don’t want your kid to suffer the humiliations and insecurities you’ve suffered, then stop projecting them onto him. Let him be happy.

85

That was exactly what I was trying to get at in my earlier post. Sticking with something and getting (even a little) better is a wonderful life lesson.

86

This is where I am with my 10 y.o. who thinks of herself as a singer/actress. She takes singing and acting lessons and has done for the last two years. It’s the first think she’s seen through past a few months, but she’s still terrible at both. No matter, she LOVES it and I know she can learn as long as she’s still enjoying herself.

I vividly remember being told as a kid that I should stop singing because I couldn’t carry a tune. But I didn’t stop and I learned how to carry a tune. And while I’m no one’s Barbra Streisand, I spent many happy hours in choirs and a cappella groups throughout high school and college.

Tell him mazel tov and keep at it!

87

That’s been a repeated theme.

88

I think of my daughter, who was never terribly interested in sports or as naturally skilled as her brother. Took her a long time to learn to ride a bike. But in 6th grade she decided to join her middle school’s soccer team. She was the only 6th grader to try out. That took courage! She wasn’t very good! But she learned team spirit and camaraderie with the other girls and to overcome her fear of looking silly. Now she’s in 8th grade, and while certainly not the star, she got better, learned some skills and stuck with it when other kids dropped out. She can be proud of being the only 8th grader with three years on the team!

Courage, team work, exercise, fun, persistence. Oh, and a few new soccer skills.

Yes, time well spent.

89

Understood. I didn’t reply to your post because I took it to be further elaboration on the point I had already agreed with (as quoted in the post of yours I didn’t reply to). I hope you didn’t take my non-reply to mean I was disagreeing.

90

Sorry- wasn’t feeling left out- just joining my voice to the chorus!

91

Yes, it has. And as you’ll see when checking back in the thread, when I’ve responded to this theme, it’s been in positive terms.

92

I was in a similar position as a kid. I was somewhere between five and seven when my mom enrolled me in a ballet class. I was coordinated - show me a move and I could imitate it pretty well - but I had zero sense of rhythm and absolutely could not keep in sync with everyone else. The yearly recital was on a huge stage with professional lighting, and all of us little girls looked exactly alike with slicked back hair and heavy makeup. Most of the parents couldn’t pick out their own kids unless they knew exactly where they stood in the formation. Mom could still tell who I was, just because I was that bad.

The school Mom had enrolled me in was very competitive. The students danced in competitions, the teachers were always looking for their next star, and everything cost an arm and a leg. Due to the school’s environment, worries about me getting laughed at, and the cost, Mom didn’t enroll me for the next year. She just told me we couldn’t really afford it, and enrolled me in soccer instead. I was deeply disappointed, but didn’t doubt what she was telling me.

I’ve never lost my love of dance and have taken dance classes as an adult when I’ve been able to. I look decently good at the barre, except for an extreme lack of flexibility. As soon as the class moves to the center, though, my lack of rhythm and inability to remember choreography shows up again. I’ve caught more than one teacher stifling a laugh. At this point in my life, it doesn’t bother me. I’m in an adult beginner class that never performs and has zero expectations. I’ve caught teachers trying not to laugh at other students, too, and I’ve never been laughed at by other students or in a cruel manner. We’re all just there because we enjoy trying.

So I get why you’re worried about your kid embarrassing himself. My advice is to keep him in dance classes (please!), but find ones at a local community center or something equivalent. Don’t put him in expensive schools that try to prep their students for professional careers. I’m talking about the difference between church club baseball and Little League - participating and competing in something like Little League is a great experience for kids if they can do it, but not everyone can, and it can be painful to wind up out of your depth.

And who knows, maybe it’ll click some day and he’ll start doing well. Or maybe he’ll drop it in a few years as gender pressure catches up with him (I hope not!). Or maybe he’ll end up like me - I played flute for years, but eventually wound up playing with an adult amateur orchestra that had way too many flutes and needed percussionists. Yup, the girl with no rhythm is trying to play drums! And having a blast with it. And maybe if/when I get back into dance class it’ll improve my ability there, too. Either way, I’m having fun trying - in an environment where everyone else is just trying, too.

93

This thread has inspired me to look into taking belly dance classes - I’ve always wanted to do it, but I’m AWFUL at dancing or frankly anything physical whatsoever. I can’t even take aerobics classes where I have to learn moves. But who gives a rat’s ass as long as it’s something I want to do that makes me happy instead of anxious? (It may make me anxious instead - in that case, I won’t do it.)

Seriously, I wish I had more of what your kid has.

94

Both as a kid and an adult I suffered from both a severe lack of hand-eye coordination and gross motor skills – in other words, I sucked at virtually everything that required moving my body.

And believe me, I tried it all – baseball, football, soccer, golf, swimming, square dancing, art, music, pinball – whatever it was, the best a coach/instructor could ever tell my parents was, “well, nobody TRIES harder than him.”

Didn’t matter. I loved it all, even though I never got any better at any of it.

Let your kid go. Eventually he’ll figure out that he’s not as good as other kids, and move on to something else. But until that time comes, where’s the harm?

95

I remember when I was ten and started learning the violin in school. My mother was talking to the music teacher one day while I was out in the hall, and I overheard the teacher say, “I’m concerned about monstro. She’s so poorly coordinated that I’m worried she’ll never get the hang of things.”

I don’t remember what my mother said or even how I felt in response. But I do know it had never occurred to me that I “sucked”; my parents had been nothing but encouraging. And I didn’t let my teacher’s worries hold me back. I eventually DID get the hang of things and kept playing till I got to be one of the best in my high school orchestra.

And my coordination STILL sucks.

I’m not a professional musician by any stretch of the imagination, but I do think my life would have turned out differently if my mother had given in to the teacher’s worries and had found something less physically challenging for me to do.

96

When you’re 6 you can suck at ANYTHING and it’s still the most adorable thing ever. If he’s happy, let him stick with it. He’ll eventually fixate onto something else.

And you’re not a bad parent, OP. You’re just looking out for your boy and your heart is in the right place. Don’t listen to the haters.

97

No. The world would be a better place if parents stopped interfering with what their kids enjoyed doing.

98

I think you recognize that you are projecting quite a bit on him. These embarrassment, the insecurity, the fear…this your baggage, not his. This is your story that you are telling. Why write it on him when he is perfectly happy dancing away? He derives his joys in different ways than you do, and one day, he will have his own insecurities and hang-ups that may be completely different than yours.

My mother is not a risk-taker. She never saw herself as having any exceptional talents beyond having a good head on her shoulders, and she derives her joy from working steadily and deliberately towards an achievable goal. She shies away from competition and status, and prefers to work quietly towards her own milestones. Socially, she is a peacemaker and strives to be well-liked and keep people around her in harmony

Well, I am very much a risk taker. I am stunningly talented in a few things, and horribly bad at others. I’m not well disciplined, but I can light a fire under myself when the stakes are high, and I can be a very high achiever. Socially, some people love me and some people can’t stand me, and I’m fine with that- I’d rather be myself than spend my life trying to be everyone’s best friend.

When I was a child, I desperately wanted to join Little League. I was enamored with the funny socks, the fresh-cut grass, the team names, and the pizza party at the end where everyone got fake little trophies. My mother would not let me join. Teamwork and athleticism certainly were very much not my strong points, and she said she did not want me to feel like a failure or get made fun of. This happened a few times in my life. I wanted to attend a rigorous International Baccalaureate public charter school with a very heavy course load of college-level classes. Despite being a good student, she was afraid I wouldn’t be up to it and would find the atmosphere too competitive. I wanted to compete in the individual sport I did, and she discouraged it because she knew I wouldn’t win (and she didn’t compete when she did it). To me, it all seemed kind of pointless without the thrill of competition, so I trudged my way through it in a mediocre way until I finally quit.

What I eventually internalized is that it’s better not to do something than to do something and be bad at it. So, when it came to things that didn’t come naturally, I just gave up. I’m not great with numbers, so I just faked my way through the lowest level math classes in school. I wasn’t good at sports, so I just figured I was one of those people who would never be able to run a ten minute mile and walked during gym class. I don’t have an ear for language, so I figured it’d be a waste to take it in college. Since there are plenty of things that I have natural talent at, I never seemed poorly rounded and it never really caught up with me.

It’s honestly not until the last few years that I learned that I can do things that I’m not a natural at. When I had to take the GRE, I spent months doing two hours a day of study to learn the high-school math I figured I could never do. I realized that I actually really like physical movement, and I’ve become a (slow, bad form, but persistent) runner. I picked up a few languages and have a pretty good working knowledge, even if i was never a language super star. I went to a top school with a tough program for grad school, and busted ass through it. Most importantly, I learned that discipline and study is just as effective as raw talent, even if it isn’t as efficient. My world has expanded to include a range of things that I’m not naturally good at. I wish I had known this earlier- I could have been a doctor, even though I’d have to had worked at the math. I could have always been in shape.

So the story here is that the things he finds rewarding might be vastly different than the things you find rewarding. The things he fears probably will not be the things that you fear- and you really don’t want to burden him with your insecurities as well as his own. And this kind of projecting can have some real long-term consequences.

99

What everyone else said about the value of sticking with something that doesn’t come easy.

Plus: you seem to be reacting in a way that would be appropriate if he were sixteen and had decided to drop out of school to focus full-time on a lifetime career in dancing when he totally sucked at it. You’re reacting as if the stakes are really, really high here. You obviously care like hell about your son, and it feels like that’s making you over-weight the importance of this.

He’s six. Having a hobby simply because he enjoys it is perfect. Yes, you may wish that the thing he enjoyed was something at which he was world-class, but it isn’t. The worst that can happen is that he has a blast, gets a bit more coordinated, and learns how to stick at something difficult.

Even if there were no valuable life lessons to be learned, I’d think it was a terrible idea to push him away from something that he loves and that can do him no harm. He’s six. He’s *supposed *to be doing high-energy stuff that’s fun. That’s his job. Not everything has to have a specific achievement box ticked at the end of it.

Let him enjoy.

100

Use what talent you possess: the woods would be very silent if no birds sang except those that sang best.
*Henry Van Dyke *