My story is a bit different then some of the others on here. I am the parent (along with my wife) of an 8th grade violinist who in the last year and half made the right angle turn, after playing violin since he was about 4 1/2, to being "serious" (he just turned 13). He has a high level teacher, and to give you an idea of the level he is trying for, we homeschool him because the 4-5 hours of practice he does a day would be impossible if he went to a regular school, private or public.
It amazes me the passion he has, and the dedication, because as others have pointed out, there are few professions that take so much to be involved with (seriously I am talking about) with seemingly so few rewards and a lot of frustrations. On the violin, it borders to the nearly insane, it is an instrument that to be even just really good takes a lot of blood, sweat and tears and to be at the top, a miracle, with competitition that staggers people who don't know it (want an example? In Juiliard's pre college violin program, they had something like 8 open slots this year, with 150+ kids trying out for it, from all over the world). Obviously, every instrument has its own story in terms of difficulty and advantages, which is something that you need to take into consideration when helping your child make plans (for example, a lot of kids want to play violin, but relatively few want to play the viola, so all the way up the ladder it is a lot easier to get admitted or hired as a viola player then a violinist; on the other hand, while there are relatively few of them competing, tubists have a hard time because most orchestras only have 1)
In the end, what I have found, all we can do is love them, support them, make sure they can tie their shoelaces by the time they leave home, and let the rest go as it will
