My youngest daughter just had her first violin recital and did beautifully! She wakes up and does her violin practice UNPROMPTED before breakfast, skips to violin lessons, breezes through violin, and is hailed “excellent” and “advanced” by her teacher. I preface this because she was dissolved into a puddle of emotional tears after her first recital claiming she doesn’t like violin and wants to give up lessons. Although this came out of no where after such a successful recital, I calmly listened and then I told her that committing to something is not without consequence. If I let her give up when things were tough then she would string together a long list of activities to give up. There is a time and a place to give up things but this is not the time, nor the place.
When you have given it your all and a long enough time to figure out whether it is really for you-then maybe giving something up is ok. But music is at least a one year-two year long commitment in my opinion, especially when you are GOOD. I told her I didn’t care about recitals or performances. If she wanted to skip the next one, that is fine. We could negotiate recitals, but lessons are another matter. Quitting disappoints me, her teacher, her Dad and frankly, in the end herself.
God wants to see us keep our promises. I also explained that riding something out is something that is not encouraged in our culture.
Honestly, if you quit the little things you might think it is ok to quit the big things.
It might be a stretch... but violin one day, dance lessons the next, your church the next, your marriage, your family, etc. If it gets too hard you can just find another activity to replace it with, right?
She wiped her tears and said, “So in other words, Cowboy Up?”
“Yeah, pretty much, honey.”
I told her in August we would re-evaluate, but to be warned, I would push her to do another year. My daughter smiled and said, “Well, can I get contacts then?” (Way off subject, but glasses and contacts always come up when we talk about jr. high) I told her this was up for negotiation and would depend on how she committed to other things.
“Oh, so if I keep doing violin, I get contacts?”
That girl! Anyway, drama diverted.....lesson learned? I hope so.
