One biggest regret in my life as a parent is that I didn’t have my older son quit music (viola and piano) much much earlier. I had absolutely NO IDEA that his heart wasn’t in music but in tennis. Although I’ve always considered myself very good at detecting people’s likes, dislikes, mood changes, wants, etc., I felt I had been completely and thoroughly fooled by him throughout all these years. He had never shown any “signs” along the way. Once he verbalized this for the first time in his life, I encouraged him to quit music and follow his true passion, tennis. He never touched his viola again and hardly struck a key on our piano ever since. All those years of driving him to private lessons, often through the treacherous road during winter season, waiting in the car during his lessons, preparing for recitals, youth symphony activities that often meant driving him to another city two hours away, concerts, etc. etc. etc. All went up in smoke simply because I had failed to see my son’s inner workings.
My younger son, on the other hand, lives and breathes music. Music’s in him and I don’t think he can live without music. I believe my older son’s distantiating himself all together from music has a lot to do with my younger son’s natural talent in music from early age. When my older son started displaying hostility toward my younger son shortly after they had started their music lessons when they were 6 and 5, I should have known better. I should have known better when their violin teacher one day had suggested that the older one change the instrument to viola.
I have no suggestions for those parents with talent discrepancies among siblings. Everyone and every family’s different. But the talent discrepancy, if it exists in the family, is something to pay a close, microscopic attention to. I encouraged both sons to take a gap year this year, among several reasons, for my older son to indulge in tennis to his hearts content, taking private lessons and entering tournaments. For my younger son, to make the music of his own, something that his extremely busy high school schedule didn’t allow him to, to his hearts content, among other things.