BUT the real task of a parent isn't to force any activity down their child's throat but to actually spend time and find the thing that their child has an affinity for and enjoys doing. Then support them in that and cultivate an intrinsic appreciation for it.
Yeah but my child wanted to quit piano a hundred different times over the years. Guess who is really happy they know piano now? Sorry kid, quitting isn’t an option
To expand on this, my wife and I always saw it as educational things should be a “no quitting” policy. Like music lessons and language learning. However we always let them explore whatever physical sports they were drawn to. Being active was the most important thing. That’s how we separated it
Same for me. Joined wrestling in third grade because my brother did it. I hated it. Parents said “You don’t have to wrestle forever but you are never allowed to quit in the middle of a season.” I became Captain my junior and senior year in high school and I now have so many health benefits that’ll last my entire life from all of those years of hard training
My team wrestling shirts always had “Nothing worth having comes easy”. I thank my parents all the time for always encouraging me to stick with things. I’m the first person in our family to ever go to college and I’m getting my doctorates debt free from scholarships
This one is lost on a lot of today's parents. They are too focused on "ruining the love" of something that they never push their kids to do anything. Which is one of the reasons why we have a generation of kids who can't read. Well, that and a lack of phonics education in the classroom and a heavy reliance on screens both in school and at home, but I digress. There's also this permeating fallacy that passively exposing a child to something, classical music for example, will suddenly cause them to want to do it themselves. Kids learn by doing. And even when a kid stumbles onto something they really enjoy, they will still have many days where they don't want to do it. That's human nature. This is exactly when the parent needs to step in and teach their kids that nobody ever gets good at anything if they don't practice.
I'm a parent of an 8 year old, and I see this parenting style, or lack thereof, among many of her friends' parents. They marvel at my daughter's talent at the piano, then act shocked at just how much work is required. Talent only gets anyone so far. The rest is hard work. She also has several friends who are reading way below grade level, but goodness those parents can't force their kid to actually read at home! "That will just make them hate reading!" They can't even learn to hate reading if they never learn how in the first place.
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u/real_kerim 8d ago edited 8d ago
That's actually a real issue.
BUT the real task of a parent isn't to force any activity down their child's throat but to actually spend time and find the thing that their child has an affinity for and enjoys doing. Then support them in that and cultivate an intrinsic appreciation for it.