14 DAY TRIAL // A new study has revealed that parents seeking to get their children interested in a certain activity are better off letting them explore whatever they want, before finally deciding on what they want to do full-time. Passions for things such as music, sports and a variety of other hobbies are not instilled in the young ones, but are discovered, and researchers say that it can take quite some time for this happens. However, parents should refrain from placing undue pressure on the little ones, as this would also prevent their young minds from obsessing over a certain activity, LiveScience reports.
“Passion comes from a special fit between an activity and a person. You can't force that fit; it has to be found,” University of Montreal Psychology Professor Genevieve Mageau says. The target for the new investigation was autonomy, defined as the feeling of doing something according to your own will and desire, rather than at the demand of or under pressure from others. Whenever parents force their children to engage in an activity that should be a hobby, but in which the youngsters are not interested at the time, they chip away at this autonomy, and this can have the negative consequence of preventing the children from developing healthy passions later on in life.
The investigation also revealed that, when children started playing a musical instrument when they were very young, it was not precisely because they wanted to play music, but because they feared that they could otherwise disappoint their parents, or worse, get reprimanded for not complying. A sense of obligation may also be at work here, the scientist says. Mageau led a team of researchers that conducted three studies into these issues, on several hundred athletes and musicians aged between six and 38. The research did not focus on a specific skill level, but rather on the thing that motivated the subjects.
Participants that had formed a healthy passion for what they did had more success in balancing out the various aspects of their life, including for example playing their favorite instrument and hanging out with friends. “They don't see [the activity] as defining their whole self. It's a big part of who they are, but they have other interests too,” Mageau says. “I'm not telling parents to let their kids do whatever they want without limits. The most important message is to focus on the child's interests and not to impose one's own on them,” the expert concludes.