Recently I was sitting on my couch grumbling to myself. I was waiting for my son to give me a draft of an English paper that was due the next day. He’d requested I edit it, and I was frustrated that he had not in turn honored my request to get the completed rough draft to me before 2pm.
As I was mulling over exactly how much longer it would be before he handed me the completed draft, I received a phone call from someone connected to his acting world. As it was a Sunday, I answered it while also wondering if the call was an accident. When you have a name that starts with “A” you get quite a few unintentional calls.
This was an intentional call.
What followed was the most lovely, validating, generous call to pass along a compliment for my son regarding some recent acting he had done.
Acting that I knew he’d recorded alone, late at night. I knew as my office doubles as our taping room, and I’d come down in the morning to the tripod in the middle of the room. I hadn’t minded, moving the lighting back is the bigger issue and that had been, for the most part, returned to its appropriate storage location. I was just glad he’d handled his responsibility without my assistance.
The person making the effort to call was going above and beyond to let him know he was doing well. This could have been conveyed in a text, or an email. It could have been as simple as saying “Hey, let your son know the feedback on his acting was outstanding.”
But this was a call, where the information and feedback was detailed, nuanced and clearly showed that the person who’d taken the time to make the compliment saw my son, and the person who called me to pass it along did as well.
As I called my son down to listen to the feedback, I found myself thinking, “this is why community matters so much. Having people who see and support you.”
So many of the arts require a lot of time in isolation working on skills. Practicing instruments, dance moves, painting in a studio, studying lines, writing music, editing videos – they all require some time alone putting in the work.
And while being alone does not have to equate to loneliness, it can become an echo-chamber of our own thoughts – positive or negative. It helps to have a community around you who gets it.
Community who understands that sometimes progress seems like it’s moving at a snail’s pace.
Who understands that there are times you aren’t sure if you are making any progress at all – and can tell you from an objective distance that you are making strides you can’t see because you are in it.
Or who understands how significant a new skill, milestone or accolade is in a way that someone who is not in the same community may not.
Someone you can text at 2 a.m. and say “I finally figured it out!” and they will completely understand what you mean.
Community can give an artist a better sense of both personal and collective identity. Being seen, being heard, being supported and valued all feed into self-esteem. Community can be the difference between questioning if their aspirations within their art are achievable and having the confidence to go all in and chase their dreams.
Part of my drive to find appropriate acting classes for my son when he was much younger was a quest to find him community. A community who loved what he loved. A community that would celebrate his wins, and hold him up during his missteps and understand what made him tick.
Nowadays, all three of my boys have amazing arts communities in their lives. From peers to adult teachers and mentors, they have an amazing group of people engaging in their arts journey with them. I am deeply grateful they receive support from their community outside – support that will always feel different to them than the support they receive from their parents.
But it wasn’t always this way.
Some of this took time and work. As parents, we were intentional in choosing where we spent the extracurricular activity budget. The focus was not only to maximize fun and skill development, but also the creation of an engaged, supportive, inclusive community for the boys.
If your young artist does not have access to this – the recent explosion of online classes, workshops, social clubs, support groups and just about any other form of engagement has been a game-changer for many teens who had previously felt isolated in their art.
I’d encourage you and your teen to look for a place where they can build a community that supports them in their art. That understands the insider language, challenges, triumphs and identity that comes with their love of their creative pursuits.
Because hearing “you’re doing amazing” from someone who can speak with authority and has no other motivation other than to offer the observation that the hard work is paying off matters. It matters in ways we may sometimes forget until the words are spoken.
I saw the gratitude and validation in my son’s eyes as he listened to the feedback. The echochamber now had an outside voice validating his work. His passion. His effort.
And that is invaluable.
