FORESHADOWING

Saturday, February 24, 2007

I have not blogged in awhile! For shame on me. In my defense, I have had house guests most of the month (all of the kids' grandparents) and have faced a work tsunami. So you'll get a bunch of posts in the coming days.

For now I want to talk about the grade school Variety Show that Sarah participated in last week.

In general, you have to hand it to these kids for getting up in front of all their peers and a packed auditorium of other viewers and displaying their talents. There were some kids with voices cracking, but no no-shows, stage fright, or puking! Quite impressive!

Sarah did great. She played her piece on the piano beautifully. She didn't really do the bowing part a great service, but the talent part was very sweet and enjoyable. And takes a lot of guts in my book.

I have to say, sitting in the audience, you do get an idea of what will happen in the future for these kids.

The kids who get up and lip sync to Brittney Spears songs, are peaking in 6th grade, to steal a phrase from my friend Allison. They're the popular girls, the cheerleaders, then the sorority girls, who become Consumers. They will follow the crowd and do what is obviously vetted as "cool," their whole lives. Apple loves them.

The kids who made up their own jumproping hip hop routines, will set those trends. They are the early adopters, the risk-takers. Next stop: graffiti art.

The kindergartner who stole the show with a breakdancing routine: future broadcaster. The only kid with a magnetism that I still recall, days later. That's a rare gift.

And the kid who delivered a recitation of the Jabberwocky even though he had a slight speech impediment? That guy's going into advertising. He's going to have to come to terms with being different, and that he has tastes his peers don't understand. It will make him pensive and visionary. In fact, I think I have an internship opening for him.

And what about kids like Sarah, who play instruments or take dance lessons or gymnastics class? You know what? I think we're a bit on the conformist side. We measure our progress against classical norms. I'm not meaning to take anything away from them. But as parents, I think what we're teaching them is that their talents come down to a series of expected judgments. Did you hit all the notes? get the timing right? play expressively? then you did it and you get our approval! This is what they get all day long in school, too. So are we sentencing these kids to live conformist lives, and quelling their creativity?

It's the girl that sat down and played a piece she wrote herself, that made me really think. And remind myself that we must also foster free thinking if we want our kids to realize their potential.