Dace had his school fair today, which meant we had to go along to watch him play in a flute ensemble and in the string group, since he started learning violin this year.

The little kids were cute. The flutes were fun despite sounding like a 4wd running over a sack full of cats. The violins were amazing, however, considering how long the kids have been learning, although I hear they've been practicing all year to get it right.

But then one of the older kids got up (by older I mean 11 or 12), to perform a solo cover version of a song I'd never heard before, and another she'd written herself. How awesome is this kid, I thought? 12 years old, plays multiple instruments, writes her own stuff... and then she opened her mouth and... OMG... she couldn't carry a tune in a slop bucket.

Now don't get me wrong... I don't think you should discourage kids from doing what they love, but there comes a time (preferably before you put them on a stage in front of several hundred people) that someone needs to say, "hold up, there, sweetie, let's see if we can't do something about that song." It wasn't even that she had a bad voice. It was just that not a word she sang was in key.

Of course, we all applauded enthusiatically when she was done (me because she was, well, done) and then the announcer  made us do it again because she was so spectacular. So we dutifully cheered again, and she  went away with a mile wide grin on her face, believing she was awesome. And in truth she was... she just wasn't an awesome singer.

Not a bad thing, I suppose, if you're 12, but four or five years from now, convinced singing is her future, she'll be lining up for Australian Idol and she'll be one of the humiliating auditions they show for a laugh, when the judges tell her she can't sing her way out of a wet paper bag, and she is destroyed because whole crowds of people have applauded her and told her she is awesome.

I taught kids gymanstics for years. I never let them compete if I knew they were going to get their arses kicked. I made them wait until they were ready and they were going to come away from the competition feeling like a winner, not a loser. I think the school should have let this kid play her numerous instruments, let us be awed by the fact that she is already writing her own songs, and suggest that she leave the singing in public until she was ready.

It's the same with writing. If you are writing crap and everyone tells you it's wonderful, you never improve. You just get better at writing crap.

Sometimes you have to be cruel to be kind. And if that means hurting a 12 year-old's feelings (or brusing a would-be writer's ego), then so be it.

The alternative is the road to mediocrity and kids who don't understand that talent is 99% hard work.

This is so true. I belong to a large online writer's site where I was recently asked to comment on someone's work (amongst other work). It was, in one word, awful. Punctuation was all over the place, and the sentences didn't seem to follow one another. there were no dialogue tags, so there was no way to know who was speaking. I told her about all these problems I had. I don't think I was rude. I told her that I thought the story itself was powerful, just that the technique wasn't working for me. Anyway, this woman exploded all over this website, crying and carrying on about how people are so mean.
Well - maybe, but I still appreciate the friend who did this for me. Sometimes you need to hear in a firm and clear but polite way that your work doesn't measure up to the standard you wish to attain.

Well said. It sounds harsh but it's oh so true.

Back in high school I was kicked out of choir and everyone wanted to complain about the teacher... but I accepted it as the truth and I practised.

Then, a year or two later, I had solos. If he hadn't kicked me out in the first place I probably would have bumbled along and stayed bad. Thanks to him, I actually tried harder and went back to the start and improved every little part I could, and managed to get leads in the musicals and so forth. Now my voice is fairly listenable. Which isn't a word. But. You know.

So, as someone who once had a bad voice, I'm here agreeing with you every step of the way. They shouldn't get her hopes up because it'll only make some day in her future very sad and very embarrassing.

The sad thing is if she grows up to be attractive she can probably make a career out of it anyway, they'll just edit it to pieces. It makes it even harder to explain the hard truth to kids when you've got people like Paris Hilton selling albums

I completely agree Jenny. Everything you do if you want to achieve takes hard work.

I teach kid Taekwondo, and we firmly believe in not putting kids up for gradings/competitions if they are not ready. Unfortunately, the parents believe that they are paying the money, and if their child is not ready it is our fault! No parent likes to be told that their child is not good enough. I am coming to believe that we live in a society where people expect to be able to get what they want if they pay money for it. *end rant*

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