[obrit]

I'd love to hear more on why you think so.

I took piano lessons as a kid and learned how to play pretty well, but really hated the lessons, so I convinced my parents to let me stop. Now as a parent myself with two young kids, I regret that decision pretty often.

Now I'm wondering how much pressure I should put on my kids to learn music, or if I should simply expose them to it and let them decide for themselves how much they'd like to get into it.

[5tefan]

I was never forced. I was given the opportunity. I can give no reasoning for this but I would say it taught me to conentrate but still to let it flow from my fingers at the same time. Performing in a relaxed state of mind. Also playing live (very rare). It made me more creative and that's not limited to music. I dealt differently with making mistakes. They happen. Part of the game. How does success feel? Try to bring on some very hard Bach piece and you know it. And also humbleness that someone like Bach could compose such fine music. Finely tuned attention to details. Finding pleasure in how a single note is struck and then fades into silence. You can struck it in ten different ways. Still being part of a team / band despite performing on your own. Discovering more and more music and admiring the effort that went into making the music. This list is endless...

[jmchuster]

It's hard to say. There are lots of things we make kids do that are good for them that they'd never want to do on their own, like go to school, do their homework, eat their vegetables.

And with something like music, it takes a lot of unpleasant effort and hard work initially before it hits a point where you really can start enjoying it. But kids would never have experienced such payoffs before, so having faith in perservering seems impossible. So one could argue that forcing a kid to commit and invest until they see the payoff, is the only way they can make a truly informed decision.

Or we can have faith that kids are a lot more mature and wise than we think. And maybe they've already seen all the way into the future and the end result. Or there is a different passion that they'd rather pursue.