The really important thing is to teach kids to find their joy.
At the end of my second year of piano lessons, my teacher took me into her living room, and we listened to Glen Miller records for most of the hour. And then we had a cup of tea, and she told me, "this is the music that I love. I play piano because I love that music, and I want to be able to play it myself. What kind of music do you like?" I didn't really have an answer. So she told me that we should stop doing lessons, but once I found music that I loved, she'd be happy to teach me how to play it.
In my early teens, I discovered Miles Davis. Once I had found my passion, all the hard work became play. I actually ended up learning to play jazz guitar, not piano. Even the heavy lifting was pure joy, because it had purpose and meaning.
I didn't become great at mathematics until I discovered the joy in mathematics (another brilliant teacher handed me a stack of old math contests, and said here, you might find these fun. I placed 4th among 20,000 students).
I didn't learn to write well until I discovered the joy in writings. (An absolutely brilliant English teacher who made us assign ourselves our own grades, but broke his promise in the end by upgrading all my papers to A+'s).
And I gave my kids the room to find their joy as well.
A counter argument is simply the observation that some stuff, it takes time (and effort) before you find the joy in it. Following your recepie, unless (as you say yourself) lucky teacher or wealthy parents, anything that doesn't incite immediate reward will be of low interest. A kid will probably pick up that general pattern too:
if joy can not be found in <T time, don't bother. And kids are not particularly known to be good at long horizon credit assignments, so that T is often hours, day, or maybe a week.
My brother (now an professional artist) told me at teenage years "some stuff you just won't understand the beauty and the joy until you've at least put 100 hours in it". And that's true in so many things in life.
I'm happy that one of my parent forced me to do some stuff (sports, music, language) even when I complained about it. Only 10 years later did I understand how valuable being able to speak another language fluently with minimal accent is, and how some of my fellow second generation migrants lost that ability, and regret it.
(having to go to school on Saturday sucked as a kid)
> it takes time (and effort) before you find the joy in it.
And the right mentor.
I distinctly remember that for my master's thesis, I had initially chosen a topic that I loved deeply, but getting constantly rebuffed by my supervising professor who constantly berated me and insulted my intelligence led me to not only hate the dissertation topic (not to mention him also), but hate that field which I loved so much.
I later switched topics, to a very different field, under a professor who actually took stride in and complimented my achievements however meagre they were. Net result, we've collaborated on multiple papers together and even after 10 years or so, consider each other friends instead of a mere teacher-student relationship.
I could give multiple anecdotes in other completely unrelated fields, from painting and art to driving a stick. Guides and teachers matter in finding the joy in things, even more so than the time invested.
> "some stuff you just won't understand the beauty and the joy until you've at least put 100 hours in it"
Terrific quote and advice. 100 hours seems doable for a lot of things (even if it's not enough time.)
If you practice things, often you become better at them, at which point they become more enjoyable.
There's definitely a point of fun - the point where something challenging enough to be interesting, and where you can make progress, but not so punishing as to be discouraging. Games often target that fun point.
>“Joy” is not found in a day. People enjoy doing things they are good at.
There's got to be more to it than your simplified breakdown.
My first exposure to computer programming was fun and instantly addictive. There was no struggle to learn coding. Same childhood experience for guitar. Nobody was around to push me. There was no need for "discipline to practice". It was simply practice-was-natural-thing-to-do because I enjoyed it. I wasn't a child prodigy. I was finding early joy in programming and guitar -- even though I was very bad at it.
On the other hand, I'm very skilled at cooking and Microsoft Excel. But I do not enjoy making any meals or fiddling with spreadsheets. Likewise, there are a lot of kids out there that hate farming but are actually very good at milking cows and running the tractor because their parents made them do the chores every day. Some kids then grow up to move to the city and leave behind the farm life for good. On the hand, some siblings will cherish farming and happily take over from the parents.
That said, I'm aware of the "No True Scotsman" argument about "joy" : If you _truly_ were skilled at cooking and MS Excel and farming, you'd actually enjoy it.
ok... so the meta question is ..... how does one tell the difference between "skill precedes joy" vs "The beatings will continue until morale improves!" ?
There was a popular "Tiger Mother" book where Amy Chua's daughter has a meltdown in public and didn't want to be forced to play the violin anymore. That finally convinced the mom to stop. On the other hand, the older sister seemed ok with piano lessons. Maybe children are just different.
TLDR of anecdotes above is any theories of optimal child-development has to account for _counterexamples_ to the skill-vs-joy connection :
Kids can find joy in things they are bad at. Kids can hate doing things they are good at.
I find tremendous joy in playing the piano today. That mostly started when I was about 20, ~15 years after I started playing the piano.
It had its moments during the first 15 years of my life, but it was more of a competitive activity than an entertaining one. Conservatively, every fun hour had about 50 shitty hours when I was a serious piano student. Now it's 100% fun.
This is exactly the same for me—I grew up playing the piano for basically my entire childhood, but it was always a chore. I dropped it once I went to college and figured I'd never pick it up back up, but then I decided on a whim to learn a song I found online. But b/c now it's no longer just for the sake of lessons, it's become a hobby that I really enjoy in its own right (and indeed, all the forced practice growing up has greatly expanded the range of songs that I'm able to learn now).
Same for me, I've learned programming, reverse engineering, music production, cooking, etc. I learned all these things not because I'm intrinsically in love with doing them, I just love having done them. This quote fits it perfectly, "I hate writing, but I love having written."
> It takes a long time to get good at some things and those days suck.
If those days suck, chances are you won't get good at it. People like things that are engaging and develop their identity and understanding of themselves and the world, even more so than things they are good at.
But kids are going to have setbacks, they will reach a plateau in their craft (music, painting, art, sport, ...). You need also as a good parent to help your kids go through, to not give up, because even joy to do is not always enough. This is the hard part.
From my modest experience of being a ski/snowboard instructor and trying to raise 3 boys (now 12, 16 and 18).
why does a child need to break through a plateau at anything?
Of my five sample size of five, expose them and support them, some things can’t even hook you until your brain grows enough .. The musical one is in a band now the nerdy one likes inhaling solder. I did force both boys to Hockey but just to have passable skills so that he can enjoy that all that comes with the sport as an adult
> why does a child need to break through a plateau at anything?
Learning that they can hit a plateau and move beyond it with concerted effort is super important. After you've done it once, you can look back on that experience for inspiration when there's a plateau that you want/need to move beyond.
Having experience with struggling with something that is easy for some others is important too. Some kids are just naturally good at a lot of things when they're younger; which is nice in some ways, but makes it hard to learn skills to deal with challenges... It's great when they find something that challenges them (even if it doesn't seem great to them in the moment). Other kids have a hard time with most things; you've got to look out for things they can be good at.
The current trend, at least in Germany, is that as soon as a kid says "I do not want anymore.", this is normal to stop. With that, the kids do not have the experience that it can be hard, but going through can bring something.
Resilience, capacity to go through ups and downs, etc. are things you train by being exposed to it. If your life is only fun and joy as kid, the day you are hit hard as an adult, you have no training.
But, this is my very personal point of view, education is very personal and very context specific, every family is different (country, culture, education, etc.) and in every family education is difficult from one kid to another. I am not trying to tell you how to educate your kids.
This does need to be anchored in value though. They should be at least playing a part in deciding what those things are before they're pushed to persevere towards them.
> why does a child need to break through a plateau at anything?
Exactly! Why? The few things I do better than most people are things I've stayed engaged with during those plateaus because I wanted to, not because someone else told me I should or that it was important. The people who respond positively to being forced into things generally end up not knowing who _they_ are, and end up generally unwell people.
I feel false dichotomy here - you assume helping child to go through plateau must be forced.
It doesn’t have to be and some people need a little bit of help - you didn’t and that’s great.
Conversely there will be kids that need to be forced or nothing good will come out of them - there will be kids that should be left alone because pushing them will just break whatever they should be doing.
It is delicate balance and difficult choices - but there is no white and black here that will be right for everyone.
Yeah I didn't mean to suggest this dichotomy. And I agree with you. Just not sure how much you can force people, even the ones who "need" to be forced. Or what "good" will come out of that. Good in my mind is a person who knows themselves, is functional, and is comfortable in their own skin. That is, a person who won't lead a life of total suffering, which seems pretty common!
his whole point was that once he found joy in it, he could excel. I'm confident there's loads of things I could be good at - I'm only good at the things that I enjoy putting effort into.
There are tens of thousands of people who love basketball playing right now and only 300 places in the NBA. Most people are average and never excel at anything, ever. Being 4th out of 20,000 is excelling and the proper response to someone using their own freakishly unrepresentative self as an example for normal people is to point out that they have no idea what it’s like to be normal.
Yeah, but something vital happened: you learned the basics of music theory and how to sight read music - both prerequisites to jazz guitar (and something that most guitarists don’t know). Learning piano is a great way to step into other musical instruments.
Not forcing kids to learn mathematics and not becoming great at mathematics until you discovered the joy in them are not remotely the same thing.
Not learning to write and not learning to write well until... are not remotely the same thing.
Kids are inherently joyful, unless they are abused. One doesn't have to teach kids to find joy.
Whereas an admonishment to "teach kids to find joy", aka: "do what you feel like" according to the article, rings true as detached from reality self-talk meant to make adults feel good about themselves. Its almost a class signal, that is a privilege signal. With varying results across classes.
> The really important thing is to teach kids to find their joy.
As an adult, how can I find joy? I've been trying out various hobbies, but eventually, all of them became a chore. I really miss the feeling of fixating on something and getting lost in it, but it's not coming back. I'm so jealous of people who have a passion, because I just don't.
As a serial hobby-hopper myself, I have come to realize that anything worth doing is at times dull and tedious. Passion is not always intense joy, it's appreciating the highs and tolerating the lows. Don't get caught up chasing cheap thrills.
We fail at teaching a means with no end. Help them find an interesting end and they will achieve it by any means necessary.
Our job as parents is to expose our kids to a wide variety of disciplines so that they can find their interest.
I read that Elon Musk runs his private school this way. The kids narrow their focus quite early on. But of course there's tons of depth to study. So they actually get somewhere.
At the end of my second year of piano lessons, my teacher took me into her living room, and we listened to Glen Miller records for most of the hour. And then we had a cup of tea, and she told me, "this is the music that I love. I play piano because I love that music, and I want to be able to play it myself. What kind of music do you like?" I didn't really have an answer. So she told me that we should stop doing lessons, but once I found music that I loved, she'd be happy to teach me how to play it.
In my early teens, I discovered Miles Davis. Once I had found my passion, all the hard work became play. I actually ended up learning to play jazz guitar, not piano. Even the heavy lifting was pure joy, because it had purpose and meaning.
I didn't become great at mathematics until I discovered the joy in mathematics (another brilliant teacher handed me a stack of old math contests, and said here, you might find these fun. I placed 4th among 20,000 students).
I didn't learn to write well until I discovered the joy in writings. (An absolutely brilliant English teacher who made us assign ourselves our own grades, but broke his promise in the end by upgrading all my papers to A+'s).
And I gave my kids the room to find their joy as well.