You are a parent of a creatively driven teen or tween. You are surrounded by art supplies, dance gear, costumes, journals, instruments, or any other tools of your offsprings trade. You want to support them, validate them, and encourage them. You are their biggest cheerleader on the frontlines and the sidelines of their lives. And you are always looking for ways to make sure you are being the best parent you are capable of being. Me too. And that is how my book Parenting Talent came to be.
It was my middle son who gave me my first hint of what was to come. By the age two, he was singing nonstop, and at barely age three, he shocked my husband and me when we realized he could belt—in tune. By the time he was six, we were beginning to increasingly hear the word “talented” in connection to his singing voice and natural affinity for all things performance. We weren’t sure what, if anything, to do with that feedback, so we soldiered on with his piano lessons and asked his instructor to add on some basic vocal training to help him avoid forming bad habits. Since we were team “well-rounded,” when his classmates were signing up for soccer, we suggested he do so as well, and he agreed to try it as a compromise. This was after he’d firmly rejected baseball after declaring “Why would I want to play a game where they throw a ball toward your head?”
As we sat in the bleachers on the sidelines with the other parents, I joked, “My son is just as likely to be found picking dandelions in the middle of an important play as running toward the ball.” I was wrong. He did not pick daisies. He ran and chased the ball until sweat was pouring down his face. At some point in the second inning, he wiped sweat from his eyes and seemed to stop and think “Yep, that’s enough. It’s hot and I’m tired” and plunked down in the grass for an unsanctioned break. And… he proceeded to pick dandelions, which had taken over the grass field that day. He decided that was his last team sport.
As time went on, his peers began making last-minute plans on the baseball field after games where he was not present. I began to become concerned with making sure he had his own sense of community with friends who related to his passion for the arts. Though he seemed mostly content to explore his interests on his own, there were times when I could see he would have enjoyed exploring and discussing those interests with others who shared the same passions outside of his arts classes.
As much as my husband and I supported his creative endeavors, we weren’t always sure how to best help him navigate his artistry with constructive compassion.
I began searching for resources on how to positively support and encourage him, while also helping him when he felt challenged or frustrated. When I looked for books on parenting kids who were into the creative arts, my search results would offer up multiple titles on how to encourage one’s child’s creativity. Not much came up about kids who were already creatively driven. Or I would find activities for children who were creative, but nothing about better understanding and supporting the way their creative minds worked.
A search for “parenting talented children” inevitably brought up offerings on working with intellectually gifted and talented children, not artistically talented kids (not that kids can’t be—and often are—both). The few resources I was able to find that spoke to kids who were already invested in creative endeavors were largely focused on supporting child prodigies. We weren’t trying to raise prodigies. I would have been happy if I could get my kids to remember to put their dishes in the dishwasher (note: still failing on that count). I just wanted some general guidance and validation that I was being as affirming as I could be.
After a while, I stopped looking and just got down to the business of trying to understand and navigate as best I could between my intuition, parenting network, and background in child and adolescent psychology. I also found myself bouncing my thoughts off fellow parents of creative kids.
Meanwhile, my oldest son also deepened his involvement in the arts. He enjoyed sports and the team camaraderie they offered and continued to participate in those activities. However he had also shown an enjoyment of his piano lessons and had chosen to add guitar lessons into the mix. This was in addition to what was becoming a very active involvement in his middle school musical theater program. He’d always been able to carry a tune. But now, under the direction of vocal instructors, we’d discovered that he, too, was a singer. His natural coordination also meant he was able to pick up dance choreography quickly in spite of having chosen basketball over dance classes.
He had a great time in his middle school program until he eventually hit a fork in the road. There wasn’t enough time to do it all, and his schedules were beginning to clash. Ultimately, he chose to forgo travel basketball to create more time for guitar and musical theater—both of which still afforded him the sense of community and coming together to achieve a common goal that he’d had on his sports teams. By high school he once again narrowed his focus and was firmly committed to guitar, with keys and vocals thrown in for good measure.
In just a few years, our sons had gone from casually dabbling in the arts to showing open passion for and dedication to various forms of the creative arts. It was during this time, our middle son had convinced us, after years of begging, to allow him to pursue representation by a local talent agency. I am not exaggerating—he was three when he first asked us if he could get an agent. We laughed and said, “I don’t think you know what that is.” He said, “Yes, I do. It’s someone who can get people on TV, right?.” After we picked our jaws up off of the ground, we offered a resounding no. He never stopped asking though, and four years later, we finally relented.
He was now enjoying participation in professional regional theater and on camera bookings. Our youngest would occasionally have to accompany us to his agent’s office for auditions. And just like his older brother, had become interested in the professional side of acting. He then joined his brother in obtaining representation.
At home, we were knee-deep in re-creations of the younger boys favorite musicals (complete with homemade costumes and elaborate staging), acting and dance classes. For our oldest son, guitar lessons that included student cover gigs in professional music venues became consistent. All three were taking piano lessons, and each had requested additional instrumental lessons and/or voice lessons. It was rare to enter our home when all three boys were present and not see or hear some type of creative output coming from various rooms in the house.
As we drifted more and more into the world of raising creatively driven offspring, I increasingly found that parenting stories from parents of kids who were not passionate about the creative arts didn’t always resonate deeply with me. There were some similarities, but there were also emotional and logistical differences.
As life with creatively driven offspring often does, the path I had thought I was on veered in a different direction when my middle son was cast as Young Simba in The Lion King on Broadway. Had you told me years earlier that I would ultimately close the private practice I’d spent years building, temporarily relocate to New York, and wait by a stage door while my nine-year-old son signed autographs, I would have fallen to the ground laughing.
Upon my return to Chicago, the boys’ lives were crazy busy with all of their various artistic pursuits. On the days where I questioned both my children’s sanity and my own, the days where we juggled all the things and narrowly dodged meltdowns, I found myself wishing they’d come with an instruction manual. So, I started keeping a list of topics I thought might make a useful book someday.
As with everything else, the auditions, lessons, classes, rehearsals, and performances came to a sudden stop when the COVID-19 pandemic hit in 2020. While the world became familiar with moving from in-person events to Zoom video calls, I had more than enough time to figure out the next steps for my career. I knew my hope was to merge our continued desire to support our boys in their creative pursuits while also addressing my desire to get back to supporting others. Writing the book that had been coalescing in the back of my mind began to seem more and more in line with my long term goals.
In the summer of 2022, it all fell into place and I began writing. Parenting Talent was born from the desire to provide useful, cohesive, and hopefully relatable information regarding creatively driven teens and tweens. It is the book I wish I’d had when I was looking for direction on how to best understand my boys’ needs and desires with their various arts.
If you are a parent, teacher, instructor, coach, or another person who cares deeply about a teen or tween creative artist, my goal is to help shed some light on how to better understand and try to make sense of teens’ and tweens’ connection to their creative pursuits. The ideas I share in the book are some of the concepts that assisted me in becoming a better steward of my boys’ journey. Hopefully, as you read this book you will find some inspiration, guidance, or even just solidarity in your journey of parenting talent.
Adapted from: Parenting Talent: The Grown-Up’s Guide to Understanding and Supporting Creatively Driven Teens and Tweens
Dr. Alaina Johnson, 2023
