Is there a chance that you subscribe to the notion that children (and humans in general) are fundamentally wicked creatures who must be coerced into doing right?

Or might you believe that the only way to get yourself to do anything is to be browbeaten or shamed into it?

I have discovered that these attitudes are prevalent around me — so much so that people don’t even realize that they have them. They don’t even know that there is another way.

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A common lament of people in the healing profession is that people ascribe aches and pains to “getting older” instead of investigating and addressing the root of the issue with a professional.

This “Oh well!” attitude is mirrored by the way many of us approach kids’ difficulty in school.

The sentiment, unexamined, is that “school sucked for me, too,” or “that’s just the way it is.”

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I’ve written in the past about “the real world” rhetoric and the fact that many teachers feel it’s their job to prepare their students for a mythical future boss who won’t let you do any work over again or negotiate a deadline. Who are these bosses that act like fifth-grade teachers? Let’s all steer clear of them.

Beyond the silly notion that the teacher’s job is to prepare students for some mythical future job where a boss cares more about deadlines than the actual work product (“Nope! It’s a day late! I don’t even want to look at it,”) is the dark truth that these teachers are doing that very thing under the guise of “teaching accountability.”

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“Yesterday, she sat at the piano and cried,” said Angie about her nine-year-old, “and today she’s refusing to play.”

It didn’t take much to soothe Angie, despite how dire the situation seemed. I told her that I’ve cried at the piano bench many a time. It’s normal. It doesn’t mean that her daughter has had enough and should quit piano. On the contrary, it means that she really cares about what she’s doing and a breakthrough is on its way if she sticks with it.

Do we want a child to feel this level of frustration in their first six months of piano lessons? Of course not. But Angie’s daughter had been playing for more than three years. She was an accomplished player for her age who was setting big goals for herself.

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