And thanks for your perspective Val. But if I only let her do what motivated her, hands would not be washed very often, rooms would be very messy and cheezits her main course.
She had a ballet recital yesterday and the teacher has this core group called the "company". The kids start in about 4th grade. They get to perform a lot in this last recital with all the young kids. I noticed they were very sloppy dancers, with their arm and feet positions. Last night I asked her: "you said you wanted to try out with the NYC ballet school next year. If you perform with them, you might do a lot of performances of the Nutcracker but have a very small role but you have to do it really well. I notice that Miss Parsla's company gets to perform a lot but this one show. But they are kind of sloppy dancers. Which do you want to do? This big performance, but sloppy, or a little performance and do it really well? She chose the latter. Which I took as a good sign.
Ren
Well...I think you misunderstood what I wrote.
My main point is that you can't force motivation into someone.
This is only my one opinion here, but to me, pushing a little child to excel or to even bring a term like sloppiness into a conversation with a five-year-old is, well, more reflective of what the parent wants to make the child do rather than what the child wants. Or what is actually good for the child. I'm not trying to be rude here. I'm just trying to show another perspective.
Children who are forced to perform to adult definitions of what's good and what isn't are less able to develop an inner sense of how to excel. This puts them at risk of burning out early and becoming unhappy teenagers and/or adults to boot.
I'm just writing from what I've read in your posts. Based on that information, I don't understand why it's important to push a little girl. For example, you said yourself that she isn't passionate about the piano; my response was,
"That's fine. What she wants to be passionate about is her decision, not yours." There is absolutely, positively nothing you can do to change this fact.
Let her find her own passion and when the time is right, she'll have her own motivation to excel.
Val
