Both of my children started playing the violin at a very young age: Clementine when she was four, and Clyde when he was five. (We waited an extra year for Clyde because he needed time to work on his fine motor skills. And by “fine motor skills” I mean the ability to hold still for longer than five seconds without vibrating from all of the unshed energy.) Despite starting at different ages, however, it took both of them about the same amount of time—a month—to decide that they wanted to quit. (I think a month is about as long as it takes anyone to realize that the difference between wanting to play the violin and actually playing the violin is about a thousand hours of practice. At least.)
Clementine’s method of telling me she wanted to quit was to throw herself (and her violin) down on the ground, clutch at her head dramatically, and moan out the words “I don’t want to play the violin. I wish I was dead.” Clyde’s method was a little different: he looked up from his bow one afternoon and quietly said, almost under his breath, “I don’t want to play the violin.”
My reaction to both was the same: “I don’t care what you want; you’re playing the violin.” Harsh, I know, but really, it was the truth: I didn’t care what they wanted. Of course, this was (and still is) true about a lot of things. I didn’t care that they wanted to stay up all night, I didn’t care that they wanted to put every candy bar in the checkout line into our grocery basket, and I didn’t care that they wanted to wear their bathing suits to school in the middle of winter. Compared to that list, not caring that they wanted to quit the violin was pretty minor. Or, at least it was minor to me.
Of course, other people didn’t see it this way. Whenever I mentioned the fact that I was forcing my children to take music lessons you’d think I was admitting to hauling them down to the local Scientology center every weekend. People couldn’t wait to tell me their horror stories of being forced to play the piano, and the lingering resentment they still felt about it as adults to this day. And the reaction I got about it at home wasn’t much better. “Do we really need to go out and look for more things to fight with them about?” my husband asked me plaintively one evening in the midst of a violin induced tantrum.
“They’ll stop fighting about it eventually,” I replied. “When they learn they can’t win.”
Okay, so I was a lot more naïve back then. Because they didn’t stop fighting. But then again, they didn’t win, either. Although Clementine did manage to switch instruments on me, she only switched to viola, which she still plays thirteen years after the first meltdown. And Clyde is still playing the violin after seven years. Have they always been happy about their enforced music lessons? Of course not (although, really, at seventeen I have about as much chance of making Clementine play an instrument as I do of making her vote one way or another. Which, is to say, no chance at all.)
Honestly I think most of their complaining at this point is all for show, a fall back of sorts if their friends ever ask why they are still taking music lessons (“because my mom makes me”). Although, really, that might just be wishful thinking on my part. Who knows? Maybe twenty years from now they will be telling their own sad little stories about how their mother forced them to play violin all through their childhoods.
Maybe. Of course, that won’t matter to me. I still won’t care.