Tree of Life Mothering

I’ve been thinking a lot about music, children, and families lately, ever since I resurrected my violin to play in a church Easter concert last month, after not playing much for decades.

It all goes back to my orchestra playing days as a youth. I started playing in 4th grade when I heard our grade school was starting an orchestra. I had fallen in love with the violin and asked my mom if she would get me one so I could be part of an orchestra. Thus began my humble violinist career. I played in my school’s orchestra from 4th to 11th grade and then put it aside until now. I took private lessons from 9th to 11th grade. My ending triumph was memorizing Vivaldi’s Concerto in A minor 1st movement from Suzuki Book 4, which I performed as a solo at a church event.

Then I quit orchestra and private lessons, because I just didn’t feel that good at the violin. I was not good at it like in the other skills I had mastered, including reading, writing, and math, with all the AP classes I was thriving in. I also took piano lessons and enjoyed piano much more than playing the violin. As anyone knows who has played both piano and violin, the piano is so much easier! I stuck with the piano lessons until I graduated from high school. I had two friends in the neighborhood who were sisters and played in the orchestra. One on the cello, one on the viola. They had a mother who was superb at playing the piano. I always felt, haha, pardon the pun, second fiddle to them. I gave in to the thought of “I’ll never be as good on a stringed instrument as them, so I may as well give up.” One of them graduated in cello performance at BYU. She was my roommate at BYU. The other sister, I’m not sure what she did regarding college, but I do know they both went on to play in the Orchestra at Temple Square. It’s been fun to look for them through the years when I see the Orchestra perform on TV and a few times in person.

Looking back, I just wish I had reached out to my teacher and asked for more help in getting better. Not so that I could be a professional musician, but so I would continue to have the joy of mastering more and more songs.

Fast forward from my high school days of quitting the violin to being a mother of 7 children. I knew all of the benefits that children get from studying music, having learned about the Suzuki method and having sold Brite music. I wanted to be like a woman I had heard about in my early mom years and raise a family orchestra, like she did with 11 children. She was Utah Young Mother of the Year. We hardly ever had the extra money for lessons and instruments. I did manage to get a used piano for $100 and impart some piano knowledge to some of the children and get lessons outside the home for four of them for a season. It was much later that I met the daughter of the violin teacher for the afore-mentioned Utah Mother of the Year’s children. I found out her secret for paying for all those lessons for all those years for all those children. She had traded raw milk from their family’s cow for lessons. The violin teacher had 8 children, hungry for milk, so it was a win/win. Interestingly enough, my cellist roommate met the two oldest daughters of the orchestra family at BYU in the music program.

Anyway, I’m bringing all of this up because I am fascinated by families who have children who play instruments and get beyond the beginner point. Not to offend any Von Trapps out there but managing a family playing instruments seems A LOT harder than managing a family choir, singing variations of do-re-mi and Edelweiss. What motivates the children to practice when it’s so hard at first? How does mom get the children to practice? How does mom withstand all the squeaky squawky horrible sounds on the way to music mastery? How do the families pay for private lessons if they don’t have a cow? When you have a big family, it adds up quickly. How do the parents deal with the cacophony of instruments going off at once?

All of this was brought back to my focus when I participated in this Easter concert recently. In our 55 voice orchestra we had a family group, a mom and 5 teen children: three violinists, two cellists, and one violist. To top it off, the mom has 4 younger children at home, and she went back to school a few years ago and is now an attorney! How does a mother have the time to do all this?! Work full time plus manage her children’s music careers on top of ordinary life as a mom?

OK, on to my story of two musical moms that show drastic differences in how to foster your children’s musicality.

First is the famous De La Motte family. They moved to NYC from CA so their children could have the best music teachers in the USA. Here is their story below.

TLC did a special on the De La Mottes called “Big Family, Big City.” You can rent it here. A few excerpts are below.

Then there’s the Holladay family, of singlemomonafarm.com. This family of ten children is not wealthy by any means but all of the children play the piano, and some of the older ones play other instruments: harp, violin, guitar, flute, oboe, and maybe more. They used to live in Utah, and after a divorce, the mom and the 7 children left in the nest moved to Virginia for the mom, Marcie, to follow her dream of living on a farm. Her story is below.

Here’s Marcie’s method in the video below of how to get your children to play the piano when you aren’t rich. She also has a text explanation on her blog here. I love her idea of not despairing that you can’t afford certain instruments that your child wants to play. For example, her oldest daughter always wanted to play the harp, from a very young age. They couldn’t afford a harp or lessons. Marcie decided that was OK, because when her daughter got to college she could play a harp in college. Marcie bought a used digital piano and helped her daughter learn piano. It all worked out too, as Marcie hoped.

In one of Marcie’s recent videos, she showed her daughter performing in a harp recital at BYU. The plan worked! The daughter never played as a child, started harp lessons in college, and learned to play well enough to be in a college recital. Here’s Marcie’s video of how she raises a large, musical family on less than $20K a year.

Recently, Amber De La Motte published a video with some sad news to burst my bubble of admiring them from afar. I was shocked to discover from watching the video below that they spend over $12K a month on rent for their brownstone in NYC, and that they have over $30K in credit card debt. Now they are being evicted because their neighbor has complained about the noise from all the music practice.

As harsh as this might sound to say this to Amber, I will play “Dave Ramsey” for a moment and give her the following tough love advice in his place (she even mentions in the video that her family’s situation is prime fodder for Dave): “I admire you for raising such a musical family, but you seriously can’t afford to live in NYC. Find a place you can afford without going into more debt, pay cash for your children’s lessons and instruments, and let the older ones figure out how to attend Juilliard on their own even if you have to move to Alabama. Shrink your overhead and pay off your debt. Take Single Mom on a Farm Marcie’s approach and be OK with letting your children’s plastic minds miss out on being taught by the best of the best in their younger years. Let them figure out how to play musical instruments if you can’t pay cash for lessons. When they are adults let them figure out how to earn the money to pay for the best of the best teachers. Sometimes we can’t afford our dreams right away, and that’s OK. It’s part of being human. Struggling to achieve dreams is part of growing up.”

How does all of this apply to me with my emotional baggage of failed violinist angst from teenage hood? Here’s what I say to my former teenage self, my younger mom self, and my today self:

To my teen self: “I can experience the joy of playing an instrument even if I’m not as good as the neighbor girls. I can keep learning how to play even if I know some people are better at playing than I am. There will always be someone better. It’s fun to be in an orchestra and feel that vibe of working together to blend harmony and melody.”

To my younger mom self: “Don’t despair that you can’t pay for children’s lessons or instruments. Keep exposing your children to music on your used piano and recordings and concerts, expose them to YouTube tutorials for piano, and let them find the drive to figure out how to get instruments and get better.”

To myself of today: “I can enjoy playing the violin at any age. I don’t need to give it up because I’m not as good as other musicians. I can pick it up and play at any time and keep learning, especially because of all the YouTube tutorials. It’s fun to keep learning so I can keep creating beautiful music, alone, and with a group! I’ll never be Lindsey Stirling or Itzhak Perlman, and that’s OK. Playing and performing music doesn’t have to be all, as in perfect, the best professional music, or nothing. It can be somewhere in between.”

I hope that Amber sees that she can foster her children’s musician skills without breaking the bank. I can see that in my teen years and young mom years, I fell prey to Amber’s line of thinking somewhat which is “Enjoying music and learning an instrument has to be at the top level with the best teachers to produce the best outcome possible. If I’m not first chair violin (or have the best teacher, or in Juilliard, or a concert violinist) then it’s not worth continuing.” I hope Amber will find a balance of increasing her children’s music skills without going into any more debt.

Here’s a mom of 8 (with Utah roots, interestingly enough) who seems to have found a joyful balance of sanity and building your family’s musical skills after being sucked into what she calls “Suzuki Uberparenting.” Read what she has to say here.

If you want more of Marcie, go here where I have her video of money-based and other non-money miracles, intertwined with my own miracle stories.