A few years ago I ran into my old violin teacher, from when I was a kid. He asked me whether I still played. I said “not very often.” But then I told him about all the things I got from playing violin at that time. I learned self-discipline. I learned hand-eye coordination. I learned pride in having mastered some daunting music. I learned to love music that I may not have heard otherwise. I learned how to express myself without speaking. And I learned a whole lot of things, and met some great kids by playing in the school orchestra, and by playing in the pit orchestra for musicals. So I expressed a whole lot of gratitude toward my old teacher.
I was pretty good at violin back then. But my own proficiency wasn’t what I gained from the experiences. There were kids who didn’t play so well, who also got so much from the experience. Some of them formed life-long friendships, and eventually a few marriages, with people they met back then.
Frylock, I had to chuckle a bit about your despair over your son’s suckitude in dancing. As someone who raised kids who took music lessons (and who currently has grandkids who take them), I’m here to tell ya, six year olds suck at a lot of things. As other posters have mentioned, he’ll either get better or lose interest.
As anecdotal evidence, my stepdaughter began taking violin and piano lessons at the tender age of four. Good god! Having to listen to what sounded like cats mating in the backyard for an hour a day (practice) was near torture. But you know what? Eventually, she got better. She learned to read music well (she was better at that at eight than I was as an adult), how to play as part of a group and went on to learn guitar, autoharp, mandolin, clarinet and sing well. Even if she had not improved, it brought her enough joy and discipline that it still would have been worth the while.
Give him some time and try not to wince too much around him.
He’s just posting on a message board about his thoughts. He didn’t write a term paper on it.
Maybe he was just mulling this over. Maybe YOU are putting too much emotion, pressure, etc. into what was a lighthearted post?
I once posted about this regarding my child on another board. The responses I got were over the top. I was just wondering whether I should nudge her towards swimming, you know, gently, show her the classes at the Y, or leave it. People thought I was going to start having her practice swim five hours a day or have her mouth washed out with Tabasco, by the sound of their shrill reactions.
My post was like, four sentences! I was probably procrastinating…
Adult anecdote: I got a degree with minimal effort and worked in pharmaceuticals for a while. I was very, very good at my job. I picked up new technology quickly, I could train new employees effectively, I was efficient and made few mistakes and was often the first person my bosses came to to get rush projects completed on time. I had a stable career, good pay, good benefits and great friends a coworkers.
And I was miserable, because I didn’t like the work and I didn’t feel like I was being challenged or that I was learning anything anymore.
I’ve changed careers since - 4 years of math and engineering courses that were hard, and I was far from the top of my class in anything. It took re-learning how to study, it took really examining myself and my beliefs in my abilities and it took discipline and time and meant one hell of a sacrifice in terms of social life and finances. It was an incredibly difficult road to take, and I still haven’t secured a job. Some people told me that they were a little surprised that I stuck with it, because there were so many times when it was so tough I would have been forgiven for giving up.
But you know what? I’m happy. I wanted to do this, and I did it and I know that if I hadn’t taken this path I’d be miserable forever.
Never close doors, either in career paths, friendships or hobbies. Be open to everything and anything, and you - and your children - will be the richer for it.
My husband coaches a pretty high-level baseball team for 16-19 year olds, and he’d be the first to tell you that raw talent is only half the story - the people who succeed in elite sports start with being blessed with talent, and then work their asses off. The ones who rest on raw talent generally become people who had a good run while they were kids, but didn’t go anywhere with it.
Frylock, I don’t think this suggestion has been made before.
Get a different dance teacher.
The way you have described it, your son is bad at dancing but thinks he is good. If that is true, the problem must lie with a teacher who has failed to explain to him that he is doing it wrong. A good teacher would explain to him that he is doing it wrong, and then show him how to do it better. Once he understands that he’s doing it wrong, he might be able to improve.
The child isn’t performing as well as their peers, so it must be the teacher’s fault? Hmm, heard that before. :rolleyes:
The kid in question is six. It’s normal for six year olds to think they’re good at something when they’re not. And six year olds have a very limited capacity for taking feedback and using it to improve their performance. Heck, most adults have trouble doing that. And dance is not exactly something where poor performance can be fixed by logical explanation - sometimes it doesn’t matter if you know exactly what you’re doing wrong, your body just won’t quite do it as smoothly as your peers. I wouldn’t automatically chalk poor dancing up to bad instruction.
Girlfriend, you and I should take belly dancing lessons together. Then we can BOTH look silly on the dance floor.
(Actually my problem isn’t necessarily that I think I’ll be bad at it, but expense. I’m trying to save up for grad school, so adding another fee probably isn’t a good idea right now.)
And Frylock, I’m just gonna add my voice to the chorus: the more he dances, the better he’s going to get at it. Simple as that. He might not join a professional group anytime soon (or even at all), but he’ll improve. And if he doesn’t, he’ll figure that out on his own. Definitely encourage him to keep at it, even if he isn’t doing so hot right now.
That assumes that there’s more than one Irish dance teacher in town, and I bet there isn’t.
I’m really in here, though, to point out something about Irish dance–it is really, really good for your basketball moves. If nothing else, MiniFrylock will have a head-start on the ball court!
(Also, let the boy dance. I wish I was brave enough to do that.)
Irish dance also provides a great background for other types of dance. I know an Irish dancer who got into the higher levels of competition in ballroom quite fast, because her feet were already so very strong and flexible.
This is going to depend on what the parents’ goals are in enrolling their kids in the class. If most of the parents enrolled their kids for the kids to have fun and exercise rather than to try to make professional dancers out of them, the teacher is accomplishing the parents’ goals.
It sounds like the teacher has a choice between hearing from an angry parent that their kid doesn’t realize he’s awful versus hearing from a dozen parents that are annoyed that a dance class for 6 year olds is being run like it’s important for anything other than fun.
Frylock, people who only do what they’re good at when they’re kids can have big problems in college and after, when they’re used to everything coming easily to them and can’t handle challenge or hard work well. It’s really cool that your son is already doing something that will teach him that some things are tough, since he may never get a proper challenge in school, even in a G+T program. It happens.
Another aspect of kids is that they care to varying degrees about doing things right.
My daughter loves doing origami, and is most affected by an art teacher telling her when she was 5, and just getting started, “wow, you are really good at that”. But in the years since, her attention to detail has not improved one bit when it comes to accurate folds. She practices some form of speed origami :lol:
I have a friend with a son who goes to my daughter’s karate school. In 2 years he has not moved up a belt. He is having a great time, loves going, but does not care at all about doing things just right to pass a test.
I don’t think we necessarily need to take our hobbies seriously (of course it’s different for careers). IMO everyone benefits from some creative pursuit, and some physical pursuit, whether they are “good” at it or not.
For God knows what reason my son decided he wanted to play cricket. When I went to sign him up I was asked, did I want coach the team? Since no-one else was willing I volunteered.
I loved coaching the kids, it was in the triumvirate of great things - sex, music, coaching. Unfortunately my son was useless. He couldn’t bat, couldn’t bowl, couldn’t field and had no real idea what was going on.
However he liked playing and liked his teammates and they liked him. I kept expecting him to quit but he didn’t so we kept going for years. He never improved but we both managed many, many days of great fun by just showing up and doing what we were doing.
I begged my parents for a violin when I was seven. They caved in and bought me one, in exchange for a promise to dedicate myself to learning it.
I sucked at it. I took lessons for years and went through the grades and I still sucked. I was in school and youth orchestras, hidden in the back of the second fiddles, making bad noises most of the time.
When I got to eighteen, I finally admitted to myself that I sucked, and gave it up.
Two things:
I was a high achiever at school (except sports and dancing) and it was good for me to learn that I couldn’t actually excel at everything I wanted to try.
Learning the violin had secondary benefits: though I gave it up it taught me how to read music, and to get through the violin grades I had to study music theory. What I’d learned was transferrable to other instruments. I now play guitar and mandola, and though I’m not great at either, I don’t suck at them too badly.
I think you’re projecting your own shame onto your son. Let him learn that he sucks in his own time - though as others say, he may suddenly blossom. Even if he doesn’t blossom, it’s bound to have other benefits. Plus dance class is a good way to meet girls.
“Dance as if no one were watching, Sing as if no one were listening, And live every day as if it were your last”
If he ever does find out that he’s a lousy dancer, he has two options: decide that he’s going to show the critics and work EVEN HARDER, or he’ll be bummed out but learning to deal with disappointment is a valuable life skill, too. That in my opinion is the worst part of only letting kids do what they’re good at: they never fail, so they don’t learn how to cope with it while they’re still young and resilient.
Crochet and drawing are the only hobbies I’ve had since childhood that haven’t fallen by the wayside over time.
If it weren’t for the ugly lumps of yarn even the cat wouldn’t play with I never would have gotten good enough to do the elaborate lace that makes the ladies at the yarn shop go “ooooh.”
Without all the scribbles that might possibly have been bunnies, or maybe rocket ships, I wouldn’t have a sideline as a pin-up artist (long story).
I’m sorta having the opposite thing happen with my kid - my wife wanted our boy to have piano lessons. Initally, I was opposed, because I was made to go to piano lessons as a kid and I hated them and sucked at it. I sorta assumed the same would happen with our boy - but it did not. He seems to have taken to piano like a duck to water, and he plays some songs already and does them pretty well (he’ll be 6 in December). He wants to play, he likes playing. We bought him an electronic piano to play on.
I was surprised, and I think the lesson I learned was not to assume our kid’s experiences will track my own.
As other posters have mentioned, he’ll either get better or lose interest.
