Suck it up

Tess and I had one of our "come to Jesus" talks yesterday evening during a power struggle about practicing piano. We have this type of talk about once every few months, and it usually ends with me threatening to take away privileges and her crying. We both HATE these talks.

Tess takes piano and voice lessons and has now for about 3 years. (we added voice this last year) We are on our second teacher, because, well for several reasons, but this teacher is FANTASTIC. She is great with kids, she has a great grasp on music theory, and she thinks scales are important. Enough said.

I took piano lessons at her age for many years, and I remember practicing would severly cut in to my "fun" time....especially when it was nice weather and I wanted to be outside! Turns out Like Mother-Like Daughter. It is getting harder and harder to get Tess to practice on her own....without several reminders. She will do great for a while at coming home from school, taking a break to relax, then getting piano and voice done so she has the rest of the evening to do as she pleases. Let's just say it has been rough for about a month now, and it is getting pretty pathetic how little time she is devoting to her weekly lesson assignments.

The killer fact is she is very gifted musically. She can hear a song, sit down at the piano, and figure out the melody. She memorizes music too easily, which drove me crazy when she was playing little two stanza songs. She would look at the music, like NEVER, and play the song. Her teacher would give her a sticker and say she passed the song....although she never really learned the notes/note names she was playing. DROVE ME CRAZY.

While this teacher does challenge her a little more....and calls her shenanigans when she notices Tess isn't looking at the music....Tess still can slack off during the week practice wise and manage to stumble through a song at her lesson adequately. AARGH! How is that learning anything?

Last night I called her on her slacker attitude and pulled out the canned speech her father and I have been using for at least a year now. It goes something like this......
"Tess, quitting your music lessons is NON-NEGOTIABLE. No matter how much you fuss, we are not going to let you quit. Knowing how to read music is too important to this family for you to give up....and for us to give up on you. We know you think your friends are having more fun taking lessons/participating in other things (like dance, karate, gymnastics, soccer....etc) but this is something we feel is WAY more important than any of those things. Learning to read music and potentially play an instrument is something you will be able to do FOR THE REST OF YOUR LIFE. People in dance will not be doing hip-hop or ballet in their 60s....probably not even in their 30s. (and on and on......that is just one of our examples.) We consider this a real investment in your future, and we KNOW that someday you will thank us."
whew.......too much you think?

Anyway, after exhausting myself, and her, emotionally, I finally just said "Tess, you are going to have to suck it up and do this. I really don't want to have this conversation again. Suck it up and practice." and walked away.
She came outside after about 15 minutes and said "Mom, sucking it up is hard......"(with teary eyes)
Me: "I know it is Tess, that is why it is called SUCKing it up....because it sucks"