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<h5 style="padding-left: 360px;">Photo by <a href="http://www.flickr.com/people/jasonedward/">jasonedward</a></h5>
<strong>As my kids grow older, I've decided that teaching commitment and sticktuitiveness is one of the hardest things about parenting.</strong>

To keep playing the board game you're clearly going to lose. To keep writing the entire story you had such a great idea for. To stick with violin or the piano long enough to get to the next level. These are really difficult attitudes to engender.

But they tend to be a big deal for Jason and I. At least we talk about it a lot together, in relation to our girls and the various things they love and hate, the activities they work hard at or give up on. A lot has been written around the topic lately, it seems, from <a href="http://www.gladwell.com/outliers/index.html">Malcolm Gladwell's book <em>Outliers</em></a> to a fascinating article I read in the May 18 issue of <em>The New Yorker</em>: <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/05/18/090518fa_fact_lehrer"><em>"Don't! The secret of self control."</em></a>

The article tells of a study researchers conducted in the late 1960s, attempting to measure self control in preschool aged children. About 30 percent of the children involved in the study demonstrated an ability to delay gratification. "These kids wrestled with temptation but found a way to resist," the article's author, Jonah Lehrer writes. In other words, these kids are able to find ways to cope with situations and make them work for them. As they go through life, the study demonstrates, these children have greater success academically and socially; they also have fewer behavior problems and deal better with stress.

As a parent reading and discussing this article and Gladwell's theories, the bottom line is this: <strong>It's not what your kids is born with—intelligence, natural talent, or a certain physique—it's what they do with it. Where you go in life has almost everything to do with the amount of time and effort you put into things, and your ability to avoid distractions and temptations, and very little to do with how "smart" they are.</strong>
<h4>Trying to nurture great kids, not Super Kids</h4>
Now I'm not out to turn my kids into single-minded little people who fabulously excel at one thing at a very young age. But I do want them to learn how to cope with life's challenges, and navigate the tight turns and pitfalls. <strong>I want them to gain great satisfaction from doing things they love, doing them well and contributing something to the world.</strong> I want them to some day perhaps earn some college scholarships, or at least to make enough money after college to support themselves. <strong>So what's a parent's role, or best tactic?</strong>

<strong>One method, of course, is an old tried and true one: tough love. This involves wielding your parental authority and telling your kids they have no choice, because it's good for them.</strong> You <em>make</em> them stick with the piano for a certain amount of time, hoping that by the end they'll find they're good at it and love it, rather than hate it. You <em>make</em> them go to all the soccer practices, even when they don't feel like it, because they wanted to play soccer and their team is counting on them. You <em>make</em> them finish the knitting project they started, so they can feel a sense of accomplishment and closure (and not have a hundred unfinished craft projects lying around the house).

I'm sure most of us remember our own parents enforcing such rules. Some of those situations backfired; we haven't played chess or sat at a sewing machine since. Other scenarios made us angry at the time, but 10 or 20 years later, we're glad we learned to read music and play the piano.

I'm in that camp. Sort of. I took piano lessons for ten straight years, hating every minute of the practicing I had to do, until my parents agreed I could stop if I wanted. Do I wish they had taken a different approach? I guess not—not really. Music is an important part of my life, and piano lessons laid the foundation for all of the music making that has followed. What I wish, maybe, is that the lessons and practicing could have somehow been less of a chore. I wish that discipline had somehow tapped my love for music, and then drawn on that as an power source for all the work it required.
<h4>The balance between using discipline and tapping into desire</h4>
That's what I've been trying to figure out lately, as our girls finish up third, fifth and seventh grades, and more and more is demanded of them from teachers, coaches and peers. <strong>How can we inspire them to work hard at something because they want to, not just because they're forced to? Where's that fine line between discipline and desire, and is there a way we can help nurture it?</strong>

Part of the desire aspect is rooted in the discipline. You reach a goal and it motivates you on to the next one: The first time you play a piece on the piano that's by Beethoven (or something by Journey—remember those Top-40 Hits piano books?) rather than "Lightly Row;"  the first time you knit or sew something you can actually wear; the moment you fit in the last piece of that 1,000-piece puzzle. <strong>The sense of satisfaction and accomplishment can be addictive, all on its own.</strong>

<strong>The other part comes from finding those particular things that really excite you and draw from a variety of your personality traits and skills.</strong> When I speculate that I could have been a really great violist, if only I had worked harder, I have to stop and ask how happy and fulfilled I'd be if I was committing more of my time and energy to the viola. I love playing music, but I like to improvise and play with guitars, mandolins, and singers rather than read music with a symphony.

When I think about my love for writing, though, and how I discovered that on my own as a child, claimed it, and gradually worked at it for all of these years, I see how that natural desire and motivation works.

<strong>It also helps me see my role as a parent in a slightly different way. I am not merely a task master and rule enforcer. I'm an encourager and guide—the sherpa, the mentor, the counselor.</strong> I can help them discover aspects of who they are and what they're good at. I can help them find activities and pursuits that make the most of everything they're about. I can talk to them about working hard at something versus quitting—why it's important to stick with something for a bit longer than you might want to, and why it's OK at times to decide something just isn't for you.

Then I can practice that <em>really</em> difficult parenting move: Standing back, waiting to see what happens.