<p>BassDad and Soozie are right IMO. You will know what to do about your performing art kid from a matrix combining their desire AND external data points validating talent. My D had some real talent as a ballerina. At 15 she was one of maybe 150 kids picked out of what must have been thousands of auditioners for an ABT summer intensive in NYC. But when she got injured, she found so many other things to do I could tell she wouldn’t have wanted to be a ballerina. And I had always suspected, that despite the talent, she didn’t really want to do it with the intensity required. I would always say that if they had put her in the corps she would have been the one saying, “Mr. B, very nice, but I think it would be more efficient if we organized it another way…”</p>
<p>So you have to listen to your kid and you have to listen to the external data points. I suppose the hardest to be to have a kid who really wants it badly despite the lack of validation. I guess even then I’d still vote for letting them give it a shot. Of difficult life emotions, regret is much worse than disappointment.</p>
<p>Hell, I was a Comp Lit major and now I market overseas software development…Like everyone says, you can get an education in one thing and wind up doing something COMPLETELY different.</p>