Engine Summer

See, I am particularly skeptical of this method of teaching kids to do things they don't want to do for a good purpose because my parents' method was the complete opposite, and it worked. And my parents' method also taught me that as long as I'm willing to take the consequences, I get to decide which work is worth doing, not them and not whatever boy I would meet along the line and not my grad school adviser, but me.

My parents' method was to point out when I started taking lessons and never again that if I did not practice the piano, I would not learn to play the piano. So did I want to learn to play the piano or not? I did. Same thing a year later with the flute: they made it clear that it was my choice to pick up a second instrument, and they were not going to nag me any more than they had with the first. And if I didn't develop the technical and critical skills to play either of them well, that was on me. Possibly this worked because I had an early-developing frontal lobe? But it did work; I practiced when I didn't want to, because I wanted the larger goal. And I spent this last weekend doing hideously boring home and financial chores, because, again: larger goal.

I do wish I'd figured out sooner that they did actually want me to play musical instruments, though; they were so determinedly hands-off about it that I thought Mom didn't want me to play the piano for years.