On Sucking at New Things Out Loud

If I had to choose a single piece of parenting insight that easily creates long and awkward pauses in therapy sessions, it might be this one: our kids need to see us suck. I do have a "professional" way of saying so that I use at least most of the time. But the message is the same: it is both an act of kindness and incredible bonding opportunity when we are willing to let kids in on the big secret that adults don't know all of the things.

Pause for a second and try to really remember what it's like to be a kid. Not the Saturday morning cartoons part, but the part where you get just old enough to realize how much you still have to learn. You're completely overwhelmed by the number of knowable and must-be-known things that you absolutely do not know and can't imagine knowing because how the hell are you supposed to fit that much knowledge into a mind that generates a new unknown every time you encounter a new situation. Which is almost always. You look at the adults who seem to effortlessly know how to do incredibly hard things like driving a car or filing their taxes or opening their own cheese stick. The adults have very good intentions here. I mean, we want the kids riding in the back seat to feel reasonably confident that we do in fact know how to drive that car and operating our shoelaces just isn't that hard for us. Anymore. Modeling is incredibly impactful, and to be clear, it's good and important for our kids to see us knock it out of the park, too. We just have to realize that from their perspective, we make the things that they really struggle with look easy, almost all of the time.

I'm not saying that we should pretend to suck at these things that are just naturally doable for us now. The last thing kids need on top of the mountain of unknowable must-be-knowns is an adult who is patronizing them by pretending. But the beauty of the sheer quantity of things that can be known is that when we stop and think about it, there is plenty that we genuinely don't know or can't do either. It is an act of love and solidarity when we not only tell our kids so, but show them.

I recently started taking piano lessons again for the first time in about 25 years as an effort to walk the walk on this one. There is a deeper meaning for me on this particular interest, so going through the steps of finding a teacher and reassuring him that I was not at all offended to be handed a lesson book with cartoon characters in it took a bit of a leap. It was there at his baby grand piano that I sucked at my first song, Jingle Bells. I was feeling so many things by the time the lesson was done and thinking about the way that taking leaps can land us in new places.

Then I left to suck at Christmas music in September from the comfort of my own home. For the first couple weeks, something made me feel like I needed to plug the headphones into our keyboard so that no one could hear me as I graduated from Jingle Bells and started on an unrecognizable version of Minuet in G Major. By "something" I mean embarrassment. It was really spectacularly horrendous at first and even though I've gotten quite comfortable with my kids laughing at my antics, I think maybe some small part of me wondered if I might be a bit more sensitive on this one. Also I like them and didn't want to offend their cute ears. But then I remembered two important things. First, I have survived three separate rounds of toddler parenting while owning a Chicken Dance Elmo. I cannot even tell you how many times I have heard Elmo sing and flap his machiney limbs to the chicken dance song. It's probably in the thousands and I don't think that is an exaggeration. If subjecting family members to insufferable auditory experiences is a give-and-take then I've paid for my chance many times over, is what I'm saying.

The second thing I remembered is that my kids need to see me suck. Not because they don't ever see me make mistakes, they don't even blink at this point when I tell them I made a wrong turn in the car anymore and I once baked a loaf of bread so dense that they took it outside and used it as a frisbee. True story. But what I don't think they see often enough is me being willing to suck at something.. on purpose.. as an acceptable and even exciting part of nurturing my own willingness to know more things. To learn more things, and to learn to how to love learning, and to have a sense of humor about the fact that sucking is an almost unavoidable step that happens right before something amazing happens.

Because the thing is, I sucked at that song for over a week, but then suddenly, something amazing did happen. The melody became more familiar, and the sheet music seemed less unintelligible. The screeching wrong notes became less frequent. The speed at which my mind and fingers could connect became a bit less painfully slow. I'm going to be honest with you, it still isn't great, but it really isn't that bad either, and it has been a beautiful reminder that I am capable of all kinds of things I haven't yet been able to do well. In fact, I'm capable of things that I might never do well, and that's even okay too. I don't want to limit my own potential, but let's just say I don't think you're going to see me playing with the pros anytime ever. I don't think this is one of those stories where the suck magically transforms into exceptional skill. That's not the point. In fact, that's the opposite of the point. It's not that our kids need to see us suck so that they can watch us transform that skill into the 2835th thing we do effortlessly before them. They need to see us suck so that they can learn "effortless" was never the goal anyway. We are actually perfectly allowed to enjoy doing something with zero pressure or even expectation that we will ever suck less. The experience of the process is not dependent on the outcome. The joy is accessible at entry level. So go ahead and suck, let the wrong notes roll off your fingertips. Sign up for that 5K and call for a ride home halfway through. Burn the pie. Fall on your butt in the ice rink. Sew the skirt with the uneven hemline. Murder that rosebush. Sink the golf ball in the lake. Lose the chess game every time. Paint something hideous. Break the lamp with your dance moves. Catch exactly no fish. Sing off key. Whatever you do, just do it out loud.

I'll be over here sucking at Eccossaise in G this week. I do refuse to subject my kids to Yankee Doodle, so at least I have dignified limits that Chicken Dance Elmo does not. I'll probably get better at this new song, too, because practicing and sucking do tend to be inversely related. The important part is that it's already good enough because the real goal of adding newness and learning and lessons of all kinds to my life is one of the few things we knock out of the park every time we try.