Dr. Alaina – I’m not sure you can help me. My daughter loves to sing. It feels like she’s been singing since birth. I love my daughter, but I’m going to be very honest, she simply does not have a great – or maybe even good – voice. Her confidence was sweet and wonderful when she was younger, and of course, everyone listening was kind. But now she’s heading into public middle school after years at a smaller private school. She was one of the only students really interested in musical theater, so she usually had one of the leads in their annual show.
Now she will be at a much larger school and they do two musicals each year. This is the first time she will have to audition with any real competition. We’ve seen the shows and there are kids there who have real talent. In fact, ever since she saw Beauty and the Beast there two years ago she has been counting down the time until she would be attending. In her mind she would have played Belle had she been at the school at the time.
She would not.
The girl who played Belle had a beautiful voice and hit high notes with ease. My sweet girl isn’t always in tune even on notes that should be easy for her. Add to that, she’s not a great dancer, so to be honest, I’m not only worried she won’t get a main role, I’m worried she won’t be cast at all.
I don’t want to crush her confidence or make her think we don’t believe in her, but I also feel like I’m setting her up to be devastated if I don’t try to help her understand the limits of her talent. Help – what should I do?
What is Talent?
This question – what do I do if my kid loves the arts, but doesn’t have “talent” comes up in my world a surprising amount.
In my book “Parenting Talent: The Grown-Up’s Guide to Understanding and Supporting Creatively Driving Teens and Tweens” I talk about the myth of talent and how this term can do our kids a disservice if we aren’t intentional about understanding what it does, and does not mean.
The Oxford Languages Dictionary defines talent as:
talent- natural aptitude or skill
Sounds simple. Innocuous and obvious. It’s often used by people as a sincere compliment. “Oh my, your son has so much talent!” But the concept of talent, especially when discussing a young person, can be selling them short.
It’s really the implication of the “natural” part that I have a problem with. There are, of course, people who are born with a natural aptitude for certain activities. Some skills and tasks come more easily to them than others. But acknowledging that someone has an innate ability in a creative field does not address the hard work and practice that development and continued growth of a skill requires.
Why Talent Isn’t Necessarily Important
Growth and development in any area requires a certain amount of concentrated learning, work, and repetition of activities. In addition to this, implying that excellence is solely derived from talent could limit how motivated or open one is to trying something new that they may not demonstrate a natural affinity for in advance.
If we believe excellence can only come from talent, then if someone would like to try a new activity but it does not come intuitively, they may believe there is little point in attempting to develop or master that skill. They may worry or assume it won’t be possible for them to progress to a high level over time. Yet most of us know of many examples of people who worked hard to add new “talents” to their skill sets.
So to put it another way, when it comes down to it, when it comes to pursuing a creative art, talent isn’t necessarily where it’s at. Skill mastery, hard work, as well as time, effort, and perseverance can help your creative teen or tween develop in their art of choice.
Avoiding the concept of talent is not intended to take away from any natural aptitude some creatively driven teens or tweens may have been born with. Yet it is important not to downplay or ignore the impact of skill development over time in helping all teens or tweens, “talented” or not, achieve and maintain the outstanding high level of achievement. Guidance combined with purposeful, systematic, repetitive, deliberate practice can build skills in almost any area.
Yes, your teen or tween may have to work harder than someone who was born with a natural aptitude for something, but when developing a creative skill and encouraging growth what matters is your teen or tween’s interest, passion and dedication to the art they want to explore even when it’s challenging.
So for the parents with the question “What do I do if my kid doesn’t have talent?”
Suggestions for Skill Development
- Change your focus. Innate talent isn’t the barrier to entry or successful growth in an art. Focus on skill development.
- Offer formal lessons. Present the opportunity in the context of “even the greats take lessons. If you really love doing this, everyone needs guidance.”
- If there is more than one area where lessons would be beneficial – enroll in as many as you can. If finances are a concern, look for places with scholarships, think outside the box and be open to looking outside your local community, and look for free, but high quality and consistent online resources.
- Share your concerns and goals with the instructor(s) in private. Then have your child share theirs so that the most efficient route to the current goals can be mapped out.
- Set up regular, consistent, protected practice time. Sometimes, for some teens and tweens and some families, every day is too much. If this is the case, discuss this and agree to four consistent days that are protected and expected practice time for each endeavor.
- Praise skill development when you see/hear it happening. Let your tween or teen know you’ve noticed them leveling up and support their efforts
- Reinforce the auxiliary traits that will help with skill development: consistency, determination, hard work and determination. Praise it when you see them in your child and offer examples of times you have had to work hard at something
- Work on embracing failure. To grow will mean mistakes and challenges are inevitable. Be sure you teen or tween understands that if they never made mistakes or had challenges it would mean they were already perfect, and no one is perfect, and no one knows everything.
- Celebrate progress, not perfection.
- Make sure there are still lots of opportunities for your teen or tween to just have fun with their art. Support their joy and passion, encourage continued participation in low or no competition settings and celebrate their love of their art with them
- Work on learning to accept disappointments and how to use them as growth opportunities . Part of being in a creative art – especially a performance based art like musical theater, is going to include disappointments. Even the best “talent” in the room is not always going to get the part they want, or even cast at all. Helping your teen or tween to understand this may not fully take away the sting for them (or you), but it does teach valuable life lessons. Especially if your teen or tween ultimately wants to make a career out of their art.
Talent may get someone started. But a willingness to work hard at skill development and reslience will take them over the finish line. As long as our teen or tween loves their art enough to accept that progress requires being open to learning, then they can make progress. It not only opens doors for creative skills, but will be a lifelong tool your teen or tween can apply to reaching for any goals they can imagine.
