6 ms·

I'm an American and my 10 yr old son is in an organized band that includes a weekly private lesson and a public performance. I agree with skywhopper that there'

I'm an American and my 10 yr old son is in an organized band that includes a weekly private lesson and a public performance. I agree with skywhopper that there's a time and place for criticism and right after the show, especially at that age, is not it. Also, part of the objective of having the public performance is to simply get kids comfortable performing publicly. My kid was practically shitting himself before the show, he was so nervous about playing in front of a crowd. So, a healthy part of the applause is recognition that they simply performed publicly. It's likely that greeting them with criticism of their playing as they walk off the stage won't do much to encourage them to try it again.

charlesdm 10y ago
Right: 10yo - agree. But once you're past a certain age, e.g. 14-15, probably not? Then again, I don't think people should be rewarded either for showing up or putting in an effort. But for younger kids (e.g. < 14yo) it's definitely not an issue + good that you want to get them to experience new things. Maybe I have different view on things, but if I look back at how much focus was put on putting in effort (and not actually achieving anything) during my high school years, then I think we have things wrong to some extent. It's even worse today than it was before -- I have a friend who works in a school and he says it's great that grading is being phased out.. not sure whether I agree on that.
- squeaky-clean 10y ago
  If your friend was learning to code, and wrote a tetris clone, would you congratulate them on their first major project, or would you critique their sloppy code? They had to develop and live with that codebase, maybe for several days or more. They're probably aware of some things that suck about it, but had to stick with it (otherwise you never finish). Having someone criticize your code, variable names, lack of patterns without asking would be really demoralizing. There's a difference between a well written function, and an entire application that's well organized and thought out. And there's a difference between playing in your garage and playing on stage. Did the band suck because they couldn't play? Or did they suck because they were nervous? Well the only way to get over that is to play in front of people more. I also think there should be a difference in expectations depending on where/what you're seeing. You have every right to criticize a group playing Madison Square Garden. But there's a reason the 14 year olds are playing O'Mallys Pub on a Tuesday, or the Ernie Ball stage at Warped Tour, and not the main stages or an arena. What's particularly awesome and worth congratulating is watching a band of teenagers suck on stage, and then watching them a month later suck a little less. We should be striving for "better" rather than "great", in my opinion.
  - sheepmullet 10y ago
    In reality it depends so much on the context. People are primed for learning right after finishing a task. Is my friend just giving coding a go or are they trying to get a dev job? Is my friend trying to show me what they have built or asking for help improving the quality of their code? Etc etc. Likewise is this a 14 year old athlete trying to compete at the state level? Or a 14 year old trying out football because his friends play?
    - squeaky-clean 10y ago
      Great points. I imagined the friend learning as a hobby, but didn't mention it in the post. If they were learning for a job or homework I would definitely be more eager to offer criticism and criticize more heavily.
  - charlesdm 10y ago
    There's definitely a difference between the result, and the way something was built or put together. I'd congratulate them on the result and tell them what they did right, code wise. I'd also perhaps point out some (major) areas where they could've done better, so they could take that knowledge and use it in the next app or game they decide to build.
  - gutnor 10y ago
    There is a lot of assumption in this discussion like there is nothing between blind encouragement and stark criticism. You want you son/friend to learn to code and his first project is copy-pasta from a book. Fantastic. Actually doing something is by far the number 1 challenge people never overcome. Second project is also copy-pasta, that's only fantastic if you son/friend learn to be a typist. He and You both know he can do that. Does not mean you need to trash him, but showing the same enthusiasm as with the first project is counter productive, instead you should probably encourage him to tinker a bit with the program. Challenge needs to grow. Sure you don't want to discourage a beginner showing how far he is from the mountain summit, but after climbing a step you need to show him the next one.
    - 10y ago
NTDF9 10y ago
>> It's likely that greeting them with criticism of their playing as they walk off the stage won't do much to encourage them to try it again. There's a way to frame it. At the end of a band performance, the audience (even if it is just 3-4 people) is encouraged to clap, even if the performance sucked. Usually, they do clap. This is enough of a positive reinforcement. When the whole thing is over, before packing up, have a 15 minute meeting in which all you do is say, "Great performance guys. You did a,b,c really well. Jeff, I saw you listened to my instruction. Hi five! Stacy, you did a good job. There were some mistakes in your chord transitions, let's talk about that so you can do it better next time" Kids should grow up knowing they are doing well but aren't perfect yet. Let's keep improving until we get there.
- gluggymug 10y ago
  You don't teach kids I assume. I do. I am a judo coach of kids. I think the point is : It is not really up to the parents to be so critical of their kids. They should be supportive and positive. It is really up to the coach to provide the technical feedback and it is more beneficial to assess performance at the next practice when the kids are back in a learning mode. At that point they are mentally ready to practice over their problem areas straight away. Parents can set their kids back by berating them at the wrong time.
  - rimantas 10y ago
    Yeah, it's really not up to the parents to raise their kids. It's scarry how we get to this point where people write this kind of shit with a straight face.
    - lbebber 10y ago
      When I was younger I could not care less about my parent's feedback about my heavy metal guitar skills - I did not expect them to understand anything about the music I was playing and I'd chalk up any criticism on them not liking the style - but I did care whether they were supportive or not.
    - 10y ago

charlesdm 10y ago

Right: 10yo - agree. But once you're past a certain age, e.g. 14-15, probably not? Then again, I don't think people should be rewarded either for showing up or putting in an effort. But for younger kids (e.g. < 14yo) it's definitely not an issue + good that you want to get them to experience new things. Maybe I have different view on things, but if I look back at how much focus was put on putting in effort (and not actually achieving anything) during my high school years, then I think we have things wrong to some extent. It's even worse today than it was before -- I have a friend who works in a school and he says it's great that grading is being phased out.. not sure whether I agree on that.

squeaky-clean 10y ago
If your friend was learning to code, and wrote a tetris clone, would you congratulate them on their first major project, or would you critique their sloppy code? They had to develop and live with that codebase, maybe for several days or more. They're probably aware of some things that suck about it, but had to stick with it (otherwise you never finish). Having someone criticize your code, variable names, lack of patterns without asking would be really demoralizing. There's a difference between a well written function, and an entire application that's well organized and thought out. And there's a difference between playing in your garage and playing on stage. Did the band suck because they couldn't play? Or did they suck because they were nervous? Well the only way to get over that is to play in front of people more. I also think there should be a difference in expectations depending on where/what you're seeing. You have every right to criticize a group playing Madison Square Garden. But there's a reason the 14 year olds are playing O'Mallys Pub on a Tuesday, or the Ernie Ball stage at Warped Tour, and not the main stages or an arena. What's particularly awesome and worth congratulating is watching a band of teenagers suck on stage, and then watching them a month later suck a little less. We should be striving for "better" rather than "great", in my opinion.
- sheepmullet 10y ago
  In reality it depends so much on the context. People are primed for learning right after finishing a task. Is my friend just giving coding a go or are they trying to get a dev job? Is my friend trying to show me what they have built or asking for help improving the quality of their code? Etc etc. Likewise is this a 14 year old athlete trying to compete at the state level? Or a 14 year old trying out football because his friends play?
  - squeaky-clean 10y ago
    Great points. I imagined the friend learning as a hobby, but didn't mention it in the post. If they were learning for a job or homework I would definitely be more eager to offer criticism and criticize more heavily.
- charlesdm 10y ago
  There's definitely a difference between the result, and the way something was built or put together. I'd congratulate them on the result and tell them what they did right, code wise. I'd also perhaps point out some (major) areas where they could've done better, so they could take that knowledge and use it in the next app or game they decide to build.
- gutnor 10y ago
  There is a lot of assumption in this discussion like there is nothing between blind encouragement and stark criticism. You want you son/friend to learn to code and his first project is copy-pasta from a book. Fantastic. Actually doing something is by far the number 1 challenge people never overcome. Second project is also copy-pasta, that's only fantastic if you son/friend learn to be a typist. He and You both know he can do that. Does not mean you need to trash him, but showing the same enthusiasm as with the first project is counter productive, instead you should probably encourage him to tinker a bit with the program. Challenge needs to grow. Sure you don't want to discourage a beginner showing how far he is from the mountain summit, but after climbing a step you need to show him the next one.
  - 10y ago

NTDF9 10y ago

>> It's likely that greeting them with criticism of their playing as they walk off the stage won't do much to encourage them to try it again. There's a way to frame it. At the end of a band performance, the audience (even if it is just 3-4 people) is encouraged to clap, even if the performance sucked. Usually, they do clap. This is enough of a positive reinforcement. When the whole thing is over, before packing up, have a 15 minute meeting in which all you do is say, "Great performance guys. You did a,b,c really well. Jeff, I saw you listened to my instruction. Hi five! Stacy, you did a good job. There were some mistakes in your chord transitions, let's talk about that so you can do it better next time" Kids should grow up knowing they are doing well but aren't perfect yet. Let's keep improving until we get there.

gluggymug 10y ago
You don't teach kids I assume. I do. I am a judo coach of kids. I think the point is : It is not really up to the parents to be so critical of their kids. They should be supportive and positive. It is really up to the coach to provide the technical feedback and it is more beneficial to assess performance at the next practice when the kids are back in a learning mode. At that point they are mentally ready to practice over their problem areas straight away. Parents can set their kids back by berating them at the wrong time.
- rimantas 10y ago
  Yeah, it's really not up to the parents to raise their kids. It's scarry how we get to this point where people write this kind of shit with a straight face.
  - lbebber 10y ago
    When I was younger I could not care less about my parent's feedback about my heavy metal guitar skills - I did not expect them to understand anything about the music I was playing and I'd chalk up any criticism on them not liking the style - but I did care whether they were supportive or not.
  - 10y ago