Strings, Not Screens

 

 

Amy and I have, by philosophy and necessity, taken a fairly hands-off approach in our parenting style. This contrasts with at least a couple of common approaches nowadays, which are “Helicopter” and “Tiger Mom,” both of which involve extreme participation by parents, the former to do everything for the kids and the latter to impose rigorous demands on the kids. 

“Tiger Mom” or “Tiger Dad” is a very Asian thing, with the archetypal example being forcing your kids to practice a musical instrument for several hours a day. Indeed, I may be the only Asian parent in my peer group that did not do private music lessons for any of my kids, and many of my Asian friends’ kids are accomplished musicians as a result of the early instruction they received. 

Another manifestation of being more laissez-faire is allowing our kids a fair amount of latitude when it comes to electronic devices and screen time. Again, this contrasts with many of my friends, who delayed getting their kids smartphones until they were much older and limit its usage. 

I won’t say that I look back on our parenting decisions with regret. But, I do think there is something to be said for more strings and less screens. In a social media era in particular, screen time has turned many of our kids’ brains into mush. And here I’m not talking about the content itself, although obviously it is bad for kids to be watching material that is inappropriately sexual or violent. 

Rather, I lament that social media allows our kids immediate and unlimited access to people being effortless in their excellence, whether athletic achievements, artistic expression, or physical beauty. Isn’t that what social media is, is to show off how amazing you are if you are a producer and to gawk at how amazing others are if you are a consumer. And, whether producing or consuming, everything is perfect and everything is flawless and nothing is messy and nothing is hard. 

Ah, but life is far from perfect and flawless, and in fact is quite messy and hard. And, to further tie this together, when we see the pinnacle of human achievement, that perfection and flawlessness is the result of thousands of hours and millions of repetitions of messy and hard. Shooting a 3 and playing a violin solo only looks easy after many cycles of hard. 

It turns out playing a musical instrument as a kid may have very little to do with music itself. Sure, some will become accomplished musicians, and all will have some appreciation for music theory. But, the bigger lesson is that making something beautiful like music takes a lot of effort, including a lot of repetitions in which what you are making sounds terrible and jagged. 

I hope our kids strive for greatness in whatever they want to set their hearts to. And I hope that they understand that the path to that greatness is littered with many performances that are far from great. I worry that seeing only effortless excellence on their screens keeps them from this insight, and that they are not impaired from not having a tangible experience of scratching out a few notes on the way to actually making something that sounds good.