Fighting for Your Kids: Part 1 “How Dare You?”

The following is a guest post written by Deb Ng of Simply Thrifty – Because there’s a little ‘guerilla’ in all parents.

I think “guerilla parenting” doesn’t only mean tough love for our kids, it means fighting for our kids. Really, if we don’t stick up for what’s best for our children, who will? I have two cases in point. The first I’ll share with you today – music school.

My son, who is just about to turn 6, isn’t a kid who is into sports. We tried karate, soccer and other sports and he hated them. I do take him to other activities such as science club and Cub Scouts, but he doesn’t ask to do these things. He’s a homebody. He has favorite activities such as building and gardening, but he’s not a joiner. With that in mind, I’m sure you can imagine my husband and my surprise when he asked for piano lessons.

This was before Christmas and we weren’t sure how serious he was, but he asked every single day. My mom offered to lend us her portable keyboard so we could try lessons to see how committed The Boy was before investing in our own instrument. In January we signed up for piano school.

For his first lesson he did fine. He clapped beats and learned finger numbers and even played a very simple song. At the next lesson his original teacher was absent. The teacher who took over had him do some exercises and said our son was very creative and suggested he study with a third teacher. This new teacher was very much in demand and all the parents wanted their kids to study with him. He went to a prestigious music school and graduated with top honors. Proud of our little prodigy, we arranged to have our next class with this wonderful teacher.

I took The Boy to his class and my husband met us there after work. Our son was nervous but we told he shouldn’t be. This was his third music lesson ever, no one expects Beethoven.

Was I ever wrong…

This wonderful and distinguished teacher asked The Boy to repeat a song after him. He sang it once and then our son sang it. They did the same with the piano. After five minutes with The Boy the teacher turned around and said, “bring him back next year. Maybe. He’s just not good enough now. Take him to one of those classes where they let kids beat on drums if he wants to play music so bad.”

Excuse me?

The teacher then went on to explain to us that our son didn’t sing the words back properly and faltered on the piano playing. Obviously he’s not good enough to play.

“How dare you!” I said. “How dare you tell this little boy to his face he’s not good enough! He has wanted to play piano so bad and because he didn’t sing a song perfect the first time ever, you want him to bang on drums? How the eff dare you!!”

I met with the director of the school and told her what happened. I said, “Look. We really liked the first music teacher. She was good with him and he had fun. But that other teacher? He’s a jerk. How dare he tell a little boy he’s not good enough. How dare he? What does that do to a child’s self esteem? You’re supposed to be encouraging creativity, not discouraging it!”

The director agreed, and she told me she never saw a parent fight so hard for her kid. The Boy has been working with his original teacher and is doing great. We don’t know if he’ll ever be a master piano player, but he enjoys himself and he’s practicing and you couldn’t find two prouder parents. Bang on drums, my eye!