The boys had their end of term Suzuki Group violin concert today. O is well into Book 6 and is among the youngest kids in his group. F is in Book 3 and is learning my favourite piece in that book, Dvorak’s Humoresque.
O often makes the point that despite starting violin 1 year later than F (at 5 instead of 4), he advanced quicker and was already in Book 4 by then time he was F’s current age (8 years old), which is true. But O benefitted from me having more time and energy to help him progress in violin when he was younger. I was very much the Suzuki parent – learned violin, and practiced alongside him, played his Suzuki songs every day. If F had progressed at O’s rate, he would be two groups above his current level.
But at least F is still doing reasonably well, and 2 books above his school classmate ET. Apparently ET gets money for playing the violin, and will get an iPad for finishing Book 1. I was kind of aghast when I heard about it, and just commented to the kids – “Other parents can do whatever they want with their kids. But I’m not doing that shit. I believe in intrinsic motivation. You should do things well because you want to be good at it. Because anything worth doing, is worth doing well. Not because someone paid you to do it!”
It’s true when I was young, some / many of my classmates seemed to get rewards from their parents for doing well in school. Whereas I never had any of that. If the school gave out an academic prize or any kind of prize for an achievement, then yes, I would get it, if I made the cut. But my parents never incentivised me, nor place any particular pressure on me either, to be fair, which is extremely unusual for Asia. So I’m fundamentally intrinsically motivated.
I’d like the boys to be intrinsically motivated too, so AJ and I never particularly incentivised or ‘bribed’ them for anything. Although I have resorted to ‘no screen’ unless they read at least [X] number of chapters with F, because he was among the worst readers in his class last academic year. Now I’ve kept that practice in just so that they have a balance of screen and no screen.
I’m also generally pretty laissez faire about their specific academic achievements at school, as long as they are doing broadly well, and behaving broadly well. I’m confident between AJ and I, they will have enough innate intellectual firepower. And depending if they take more after AJ or I, they will be more or less diligent at school, but regardless, they will deliver when the time comes to deliver. The most important thing is to instil the right values and principles. They’re such lovely boys.. just not the politest and best behaved, maybe because I’m not super strict and ‘on the ball’ with some of these things… sometimes because I’m slightly oblivious / unaware myself, and maybe I also have an innate rebellious streak.
