Trusting our children and letting go.

As someone trained in fine arts, I had a built in belief about the cliché of “the starving artist”. Regrettably, that “starving artist” mentality informed many of my attitudes about making a living.

When Max, who is gifted in math and science announced that he was no longer interested in studying cognitive science in college, but wanted to become a symphony percussionist I admit that my heart sank. My first thoughts were, oh no. what kind of poverty will he have to endure? Not only did he want to be a professional musician, but he was a percussionist, and how many percussionists does any one symphony have? How many available jobs worldwide does that make? Although I did not oppose him, I used it as an opportunity to talk about the necessity of being multi-skilled with more than one income stream. I admit that this response was not very “Yes”. But he ended up studying percussion at the Peabody Institute for two years before transferring to and graduating from The University of Virginia College of Music. He’s currently applying to the Baltimore City Teaching Residency where he hopes to teach music this Fall.

And when Charlie, equally talented in math and science, changed his mind about being a professor, where he could “entertain a captive audience”, and announced one day that he wanted to be a stand-up comedian, I just about died. Being a percussionist for a symphony where there are very few jobs was challenging enough. But I had never considered a pursuit in the arts that might be even more challenging than music. Rod and I talked with Charlie about this desire and, without shooting it down, told him that he had managed to pick a field of endeavor where successful practitioners could practically be counted on both hands. We encouraged him to pursue that passion while at the same time building a knowledge base in another area he was attracted to that could provide him a living. He has been a member of his school’s comedy improv troupe, the Ritalin Test Squad, for two years and has recently declared a dual major in Information Technology and Neuroscience with the intention of eventually working in the growing field of Artificial Intelligence. He’s even secured a paid position this summer working on a faculty member’s AI project that will also earn him academic credit!

As we say in the book, “Mean what you say”. I did not want to squash my children’s artistic passions, but I did need to learn to trust that they would be able to figure out how to pursue them, just as I have had to do with my own artistic dreams.