Why Do Parents Torture Their Children?

The woman that lives across the street is a flute teacher. On weeknights and weekends she gives private lessons to the local teens and pre-teens. We often get a glimpse of very well rounded young ladies in headbands tromping out of the house to mom's minivan waiting in the driveway. And due to the unseasonably cool weather we also get to listen to flute music drifting out our neighbors open windows - sometimes beautiful, sometimes... err, not so much.

The other day I was cleaning up in the living room and could hear some particularly pathetic flutist attempt god only knows what song, stopping every couple of notes to regroup and try again, limping through the lesson. Ugh. This girl really should take up drums or something because the flute is not her friend.

Finally, the next student arrives signaling the end of nails on a chalkboard, and because I am a nosy neighbor I watch out the window to check out the poor girl who had just spent the last half hour unknowingly turning my fellow neighbors deaf. And out comes a skinny, 13-year-old, BOY... in a button down shirt... with his dad... who was yelling at him for not practicing. Well, not really yelling - you know when you're really ticked off but you're in a public place so you kind of whisper and yell at the same time? That's what the dad was doing. And that poor boy looked so helpless carrying his dainty little flute case and trying to hide in the backseat of the car.

Now before you get on my case about "boys can play flute too" let me just say that I am all for musical equality and if a boy WANTS to play the flute then by all means he should play the flute. However, in this case, that poor boy clearly did NOT want to play the flute. And I'm sorry, but if a boy doesn't want to play the flute then why would his DAD of all people insist on it? What is playing the flute going to do for your boy long term dad? Get him beat up by a football player? Get him a one way ticket to dorkland? Trust me, as a high school flutist myself, it takes a great deal of trickery to convince your peers that just because you're in the band does not make you a nerd - what are your chances if you're a boy with a flute? Nada. Why torture this kid? Get him some drum sticks and be done with it. Drummers are hot.