Simon Cowbell as a judge on American Idol, has earned himself a bit of a reputation for being cruel when telling the participants when they have not quite measured up. People are often shocked by his brutal honesty and (perhaps) lack of tact. But in some ways, he can just make the participant a service. One participant, parents should have done.
The fact is that in our modern Western society, we have reached a point where we do not want to say something to a child who can hurt his feelings, although it may be more beneficial for the child to be truthful. A word that is rarely used these days by educating children is the terrible word no. Oh, little Jimmy wants an all ice cream diet. Sure that he is morbidly obese, and already have diabetes at the age of 12, but if we say no, his little feelings get hurt.
So what ends up happening is that by not hurting a child's feelings, we risk to his health. Now the above example is extreme, but we think it illustrates a point. The point is shown, that tell people something nice for the sake of not hurting their feelings is not always the right thing to do. Sometimes honesty is the best approach.
Among the harsh realities of life is that it is actually getting good at something, you normally must apply yourself. It includes music. To become a good musician, it may imply some degree of dedication and hard work. You may even (dare we say it?) Has the practice. You may even need to crack open a book and study some music theory. We know this may seem like a radical approach, but there are some people out there who believe that this approach actually works.
One approach, a parent can take when a child is interested in music is to give a compliment, and then follow it with criticism. A parent can say "we like it, but if you changed it, we think it would be even better." You got criticism of what is wrong, targeting them where they can do, what is wrong, but you've also made a point to praise them in the process. Complimenting them in the process softens blow of criticism.
A child needs to know that to excel at something they need to apply themselves. Tell them that everything they do is impeccable, not achieve it. This could apply to anything we try to teach our children, not just music.
Some may say to ourselves, "what makes you such an expert on educating children?" we say in return: "We are not an expert on raising children." Our expertise lies in teaching people how to play guitar, and how to learn music theory. We understand how important music theory and how important it is to apply yourself to become a good musician.
It is our experience teaching guitar and music theory, we encountered a number of people before we met, had very little understanding of how much they would need to apply themselves to excel as a musician. We think that quite often it is because their parents never explain to them that the use of itself is a prerequisite for being good at something. Sometimes parents want to do it with some things, but not with music.
Music is often seen as something fun or entertaining to do and not often seen as work.Unfortunately, if you want to do it as a profession, then you have to actually "work" on it. It means you have to take it a little more seriously than the average person is just playing the guitar as a hobby. It is what separates a professional from an amateur or wannabe.
So if mom and dad never told you what you need to work to improve as a musician, so you might want to do a self evaluation. If you are a singer, tape yourself. Listen to yourself and try to be honest. Do not get too discouraged if you finally come to the realization that you are not as good as you thought you were. There are ways of fixing this. It's called practice. If you play guitar or another instrument, you can do the same. Tape yourself. Be somewhat critical. Do you play in time? Are you playing notes clearly?
If you do enough to assess yourself as a musician, apply yourself and work on your mistakes, you will get better. There is no doubt about it. And if you do, will then maybe one day Simon Cowell, or someone like him not to do your dirty work parents. Maybe Simon will tell you that your performance was fantastic! At least with him you know he's not just saying that to spare your feelings.
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