I’m a father of two, a five-year-old girl and a one-year-old boy. They are both happy and healthy and doing well in life. My daughter started school this year and loves it, she is leading her class in phonics and receiving great feedback from her teacher. But I keep hearing about child prodigies who had already started practising their crafts long before five.
From pianists to F1 drivers, it seems some kids are already well on their way, and I don’t know if I should be encouraging, or forcing, my daughter in one certain direction. I do a completely different job to my parents and didn’t settle till later in life. Am I letting my daughter down by not pushing her harder towards a future career?
Eleanor says: One of the strange things about parental love is its restlessness; even when things are going well, the worry is they could be going better. It’s natural to be anxious about giving your kid the best start possible, or the most support you can. We want to give our children superlatives and help them achieve them, too. You mention the fact that you didn’t “settle” until later in life. One natural expression of the parental-improvement instinct might be wanting to get your kids on a fulfilling, prosperous path as soon as possible.
But there are some things to keep in mind. First, prodigies of the sort you mention are rare. We talk about them precisely because they’re the notable exception. Most people – most successful people – were not world-class at anything when they were under 10. Second, early prodigiousness doesn’t necessarily mean long-term success.
What it does necessarily mean is an extraordinary amount of work. To be a child or adolescent “well on the way” to a career defined by excellence, you have to put in astonishing amounts of effort. I mean identity-dominating, sheer brute hours that will alter her life and set expectations for your son. If you are the parent driving that amount of work, you will also be the parent associated with its opportunity cost: with the fact that she is practising or training when others are with friends, trying multiple things, or failing.
So pushing (or forcing) her into a career now won’t necessarily guarantee her future. But it will guarantee you change your relationship with her. It’s worth thinking seriously about whether that gamble makes good on its cost.
It’s wonderful that your daughter’s skill has been recognised, by you and by her teacher. Perhaps you could try to celebrate that skill – answering your own wish to not “let her down” – in a way that isn’t about pushing for a particular career. You don’t mention that she’s showing a preoccupation with any one area, like sport or music. So perhaps the “job” to shepherd her towards isn’t any specific profession but the task of finding the things she likes and doing more of them.
After all, the joy of skill isn’t exhausted by achievement. Athletics or reading or musicianship can just be kaleidoscopically fun ways to learn about yourself and the world. That’s especially true at her age, before skills get intertwined with concepts like “money” or “comparison”. What can you do? How does it make you feel? Would you like to do more of it? The point here wouldn’t be excelling for excellence’s sake but showing her that the very fact she loves doing something is exciting to you.
Perhap you could direct some of your wish to not let her down on cementing your relationship, no matter her achievements. Our parents can set us on a path towards a secure, prosperous future; but they can also give us the knowledge that no matter what happens – no matter our success, or how hard we work – their love will endure. And constancy of support might be the best “superlative” you can offer.
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