Letters to the Editor
Allie_
Published Letters: 1234 Editor's Choice: 108
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Please let her quit
[Read the article: My 13-year-old singer wants to quit piano lessons]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]When I was 13, I was a promising young rider. My parents wanted me to have a career in show jumping and spent loads of money on me. I competed against adults across the country, and even traveled outside the country for events. I live in a town which has a street named after a multiple Olympic gold medal equestrienne - Melanie Smith - and everyone around me was convinced I could follow in her footsteps. From the outside, it looked thrilling. My parents bragged a lot about their exceptional daughter.
What I wanted was to be normal and be able to have friends and not have to be laughed at in gym class because I had callouses on my legs from the constant wear of stirrup leathers against my skin. I loved horses - still do - but I wanted to be allowed to love them as a hobby, not as a career.
It's true, to a point, that certain things - gymnastics, dance, piano - require commitment at such a young age that a child may need help from outside to keep going. For example, I wish that my parents had made me keep taking piano lessons when I wanted to quit at the age of seven. I realize, trying to learn as an adult, that the basic skills of playing are hard to pick up as an adult. But a 13 year old is old enough to have the strength to know and support her own passions. It sounds as if you have already succeeded in making her loathe piano - keep going, you may yet succeed in making her hate music! And as an added bonus, maybe you can make her hate YOU!
Why would you want to do that? Why on earth would you be so arrogant as to think you have the right to choose your daughter's career and the direction of her entire life?
When you stopped ballet at the age of 13, it was because you are not and never will be a ballet dancer. Accept that about yourself - that YOU made a decision, that you are not the kind of person who has or ever would have had the passion to be a ballet dancer. If your mom had made you keep going at 13, you might have been a professional, but you would have been a miserable one, doing it because someone else forced you until you got old enough to force yourself. Vocations have to come from the id, not from the super-ego. Your mom did not let you down. You chose yourself what you wanted to do. If you regret it now, have the honor and the honesty to own your own decisions and regret them.
As things stand, you've created a fiction - that mothers have the authority and the responsibility to decide the optional interests of teenagers - which allows you to escape from your regret at your own past choices. Cut it out. Let it go. Accept that you didn't become a ballet dancer of your own free will, and stop torturing your daughter.
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misplaced concern
[Read the article: One online predator per child?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The thing about internet predators is that they are INTERNET predators. In other words, they are people, just like other people, except... farther away.
What about dad? Grandpa? Mom's boyfriend? These people are not far away. They account for the overwhelming majority of sexually abused children, and they are in a uniquely privileged position when their victims' mothers are poor women who rely on them for income. Who's raising the alarm about them?
Yes, it's true, there are indeed moms who pimp their daughters. I think those kids have more immediate problems to worry about than some guy with a hardon and access to a chat room in another state.