A few days ago I posted this picture of my 12 year-old daughter, Mimi*, painting her locker on Instagram, and shared it with friends on Facebook. The explosion of amazed wows got me thinking about being the mother of a kid who has found a passion. It’s more complicated than simply being proud and amazed.
Mimi doesn’t just like making art. She must make art.
I’ve watched Mimi’s passion for drawing, painting, and digital art blossom in the last three years. It started with sketching and doodling in a notebook, then moved to the computer. She now draws/paints most of her art using illustration software and a tablet with a pen-shaped stylus (that’s how she drew the mushroom below, which I use as my iPhone lock screen).
Mimi taught herself by watching speedpaints on YouTube. After that, it was practice. Hours and hours of practice.
Helping kids “find their passion” seems like Job #1 these days. Passion is often pegged as the precursor to a meaningful career and life and it doesn’t look bad on the college application, either. (I would argue “not necessarily,” but that’s the topic of another post.)
The importance of finding this passion — whatever it is — drives well-meaning parents to sign their kids up for a dizzying array of enrichment activities. Others may approach “exposure” more casually, but are haunted by a vague sense of failure when their free-spirited kid says he’s just not that into soccer. Or violin. Or anything, it seems.
I’m in there with everyone else. I want my kids to grow into happy, productive adults, and sometimes wonder if my relaxed approach is too “soft.”
But, in Mimi’s case, my feelings are irrelevant and I can’t (and wouldn’t) take any credit for her artistry. Her passion and drive burst forth with no special exposure to art classes or encouragement to “be artistic,” and have nothing to do with our parenting strategies.
My husband and I are in awe of Mimi’s skill, and her commitment to improving. But parenting a kid who has found a passion comes with complications. We constantly have to remind Mimi to do other things, anything, besides art. Homework, physical activity, chores, spending time with friends. It’s not that she doesn’t care about these things, she just forgets.
Mimi gets so focused while she’s drawing she forgets to eat.
This is where the narrative of finding a passion collides with another piece of parenting gospel: the importance of being well-balanced. Parents want to raise kids who can juggle (ideally, excel at) academics, sports, friendships and hobbies with ease. Well-balanced kids don’t spend too much time on any one area of their lives. The assumption is that these kids will grow up to be well-balanced adults.
But passion is the opposite of balance.
A kid who’s passionate about something turns away from other activities. She forgoes socializing and doesn’t want to venture too far on weekends. She narrows her focus. If Malcolm Gladwell is right about the 10,000 hours it takes to achieve mastery, I’m watching Mimi find those hours anywhere she can, including stealing them from sleep.
The result is undeniable. Mimi’s technique is deepening, and her art grows more sophisticated by the month. She has developed a supportive artistic community online (not unlike the community I found ten years ago when I started blogging) and is even mentoring other artists.
Her confidence is soaring, and she finds her artistic work meaningful in a way I’ve only experienced as an adult. It’s amazing to watch this passion unfold.
But, as a parent, it’s tricky.
It’s hard to know when — or if — to inject a message of moderation. When Mimi’s drawing, she’s in her zone. Psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi calls this flow and claims it’s “the secret of happiness.” Should I really disrupt her flow because I think it’s time for her to eat a sandwich? What about when she’s been at her computer drawing for four hours? Five? Six?
Sometimes Mimi’s passion for art conflicts with what the rest of the family needs. Okay, if I’m honest, with what I need. I’m always gunning for a hike, drive or wander with my family. These are my favorite people, and I want to share adventures and make memories together. But after a busy week at school, Mimi (who’s also an introvert) craves quiet, solo, unstructured time at home. We compromise — she sometimes joins me on my walks, and I make very few plans on the weekends — but it’s not easy, and neither of us gets as much time as we want.
Because Mimi’s art is so impressive, people tend to shower her with well-earned praise and attention. Then the questions follow. “Do you want to be an artist when you grown up?” “Are you going to go to art school?”
This is generous and lovely, but I worry it sends the (unintentional) message that art is Mimi’s only path toward a fulfilling career. I often remind her that her art never needs to earn a dime; some of the very best artists keep their day jobs. Art might become her lifelong hobby, and her career might be something else — anything else.
She will always be an artist. But I want her to know that she’s more than her art.
How do you parent a child who has a passion? How do you telegraph support while setting limits? I’d really like to hear from other parents who are in this situation, because we’re just groping our way along (which, I guess, is what we’ve always done). There’s no wrong answer, which means there’s also no right answer.
That doesn’t mean I’m throwing up my hands. Passion or no, Mimi lives in a world which includes school, friends, family, chores, and regular mealtimes. Assuming her artistic passion is lifelong (no guarantees, but it’s looking that way), she’ll have to balance art with her other responsibilities for the rest of her life.
All I can do is trust her. Give her permission to explore. Make room in our lives for her passion. I have to accept that I don’t fully understand what’s happening or where this is going, and give her the opportunity to show me, and to find out herself.
* “Mimi” is my daughter’s Internet name. At this point she’s old enough to give me permission to use her real name (and she has, along with okaying this post before I published it), but I still use it because I want her eventual Google results to be stuff she’s created.
What a great article. May I have permission to share this with my students? We are discussing this very thing in class right now.
I would be honored, Lainie. Thank you!
My eldest is 12, and since preschool, has preferred to spend countless hours drawing and painting. She’s very introverted and gets “peopled-out” very easily. Initially, I was worried about how much time she spent immersed in art. Like your daughter, she’s very gifted and friends and relatives haven’t expressed as much concern about the time she spends doing art, because she is “so good at it.”
That being said, I am not concerned, either. We unschool, and Ruth chooses to use her time on what is meaningful to her – and what is meaningful to her is what she will retain for life. Unschoolers believe that if a child is engaged deeply in an activity, they are learning from it, and the best way to learn is be following one’s passion all the way down the rabbit hole. Ruth has learned so much about history, geometry, literature, geography, chemistry and much more by following her natural interest in all things art. (I know that I learn much the same way – if something sparks my interest, I want to devour everything I can related to that – I want to master it, and because my brain and heart are so engaged, I will retain what I learn.)
We only have one life, and a large reason we unschool is because I wish very much that I had been given the freedom and time to explore my passions in childhood, instead of frittering away time on things that were ultimately meaningless and useless to me.
So, to answer your question – yes, we let our 12 yr-old draw all day if she wants. We set no limits – we follow her lead. She still manages to eat and sleep and get other things done when she needs to, because she’s been giving the opportunity to figure out on her own how to balance life, instead of having external rules imposed on her – she’s learned to self-regulate and set a schedule that may be different than one we would have chosen.
If she wants to chase her dream, we let her. It’s her life, and she doesn’t have to perfect it in childhood – in fact, that’s what childhood is about – testing out things, trying on things, learning how to balance and how to explore. We take her to the art museum – even when she asks to stay for hours. We buy her all the art supplies she wants, she goes to art camp at the Oregon College of Art and Craft. She’s plugged in to a whole community of junior high kids online who are as obsessed with art as she is. Our house is littered with sketchbooks and paint and brushes, and her room is a pile of art supplies. She has other interests (she loves to read, she plays roller derby, she loves to go on bike trips and nature hikes), but she’s always got her sketchbook with her. And she’s happy, and she’s thriving.
I can totally relate in so many ways! My 11 year old is the same way when it comes to his passions! I think it’s important for all human beings to have balance in their lives. All of us get a little obsessive over something – checking Facebook/Pinterest :-), work, online shopping, reading news/books, watching Netflix… The list goes on! Helping our young creatives understand that need for balance is similar to us adults finding a good stopping point in our “flow” to take in all the other beauty that life offers.
I’m not a parent, so I can’t give you advice from that perspective. But I used to be Mimi, so I have some insight on what life looks like having grown up with an intense passion. Eventually, it fell out of my life (and is now only tangentially a part of it), but it obviously still greatly influenced how I grew up and the person I became.
I was an intense athlete growing up (not in a school sport, so required a lot of time out of that milieu). My parents, like you (at least, like you sound) were proud but slightly befuddled — they wanted me to be well-rounded, to have a “normal” childhood. I can tell you, I had zero interest in a normal childhood and my parents’ attempts to encourage me to have one made me confused and miserable. There was no stopping me — in late elementary school, I was begging for more practice time. By high school I thought of literally nothing else and (in the end) missed a full quarter of my senior year of high school for practice and competitions.
I got very good grades, but more because I was too competitive to be bad at school than because I actually cared about school. The rest of it I let fall by the wayside, more or less. I had friends, both in my sport and at school, but I didn’t have what anyone would ever call a “typical” experience — hardly any dating, partying, etc., even as I grew older. My parents even kind of rolled over in the end: I was not allowed to hold a job, and I had zero household responsibilities aside from making sure my room wasn’t a complete disaster. Eventually, they became perfectly comfortable planning family things without me. If I was free and interested, I would participate. If not, I wouldn’t.
And you know what? It worked out! When I went away to college and my sport was less a part of my life, I learned about laundry and dishes and cooking and handling money. I was a social late bloomer, but I worked that out too. Sometimes I wish I’d paid more attention to social stuff when I was a kid/teenager, because figuring it out later was hard and demoralizing, but I look back and have no idea how it would have worked. I had no interest in it myself, and would have (and did) resist others’ efforts to push me in that direction.
As I mentioned at the beginning, my sport is no longer part of my life, and I am a successful adult with three degrees and a fairly high profile career. I can clean my house and I’m a good cook and I do fine with managing my money. I’m still an introvert, so I don’t have a ton of friends, but I have enough close ones. I travel. I’m close to my parents.
Tl;dr — your passionate kid is not going to conform to the life you thought you wanted for her, but she’s going to be okay anyway.
This is one of the most profound postings you have ever made. This is a bit of a dilemma, no doubt. Yes, she needs to do more than just art (“just” is not the right word considering her incredible talent, but all I can think of). However, I wouldn’t push her away from it just yet. That is only my opinion. Something tells me she will cut back on her own to some extent once she is deeply in her teens when kids become more socially active.
I like your thoughts, and your questions. I don’t have the answers, but I share a common history with your daughters present. That nearly made sense.
They way you describe your daughter is the way I would describe myself at her age. Now, I am on the other side of things.
I make legs. Prostheses. I haven’t painted in about five years. I miss that alot.
You were correct when you said that most artists keep they day jobs, but I would add a little more to that. Most artists become their day jobs.
There is a certain art to what I do, and I don’t think I would do it as well as I do without chasing down dreams like your daughter is now, but I no longer consider myself an artist; and truthfully, that makes me feel a more than a little hollow.
You are right to have caution, but don’t forget the other side of it as well. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi is correct.
My dear, I think we need to do a podcast on this topic. So much great food for thought and the added pressure and assumptions that come with being good at something… well, we have a lot to discuss.
I love miss M. and can’t wait to hang out with her someday.