My daughter has been taking piano lessons for the past two years, and it fills me with joy when I think about how far she has come. I will never forget the pride I felt last year, at her first-ever concert, when she walked to the piano, bowed adorably, then flawlessly played a complex song she had been struggling with in practice, leading the mother of a much older girl, a brilliant pianist, to say my daughter reminded her of her own at that age.
But moments like that have been tempered by the pleading, cajoling, arguing, crying and yelling that has taken place most mornings, some afternoons and on occasional weekends over the last two years, when we would tell her it was time to practise piano and she would tell us it wasn’t.
Even when she got up to the piano, it would often take a long time for anything to happen, and when it did happen, it would be followed by a long pause before anything else happened. She would demand my wife sit with her, which would take half an hour or more out of my wife’s day, time she didn’t have, most of which she would spend saying, “Come on, darling!”
It was not that we were tiger parents, far from it. Our daughter was only doing piano because she had requested to, over and over, until we gave in. For the last few months, we had several times suggested to her that maybe it was time to quit, but even when she was at her most practice-resistant, she furiously rejected that idea. Sometimes, she appeared to be crying two separate sets of tears simultaneously – one at having to practise piano and another at the suggestion she should quit.
For the good of everyone’s mental health and the practical requirements of our busy household, we took the decision out of her hands. My wife texted me at work to tell me the news. She’d discussed it with the piano teacher, who’d agreed it was for the best.