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I was forced to be a child star. It was never my dream or my idea

wilwheaton.net

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Re: I was forced to be a child star. It was never my dream or my idea

#171

Post by bil7 »

Gordonjcp wrote: post #118
belval wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just to push that thought a bit further, it's fine if you don't like stranger things but a mashup of 80s ideas is "original" for more than half the US population (median age is 38 y/o). I'm in my twenties, my parents watched movies in the 80s, and even then they were young. Discounting a TV show because it rips off ideas from things that are 40 years old seems like a harsh stance to take.

Yeah, maybe watch something original and not totally derived from something else, like the Marvel movies, or Sonic the Hedgehog 2, or Fantastic Beasts...

pretty hard when about 80% of new films these days are a sequel, remake, or tie into an existing universe[1]. Yes, just watch old films you say, but they're not on the front page of netflix and disney+, where the average person goes for entertainment recommendations.

[1] https://experimentalhistory.substack.com/p/pop-culture-has-b...

Re: I was forced to be a child star. It was never my dream or my idea

#172

Post by kibibyte »

irjustin wrote: post #8

Wow Will was such a part of my childhood watching Star Trek. Obviously, he didn't appear often but he was memorable simply because there were so few people as young as him on the show. Sad to hear this all around. This also brought back memories of me being required to play piano growing up. I hated piano, performing (recitals), playing in general. I was terrrribbleee (still am) and was put up in lessons for 12 years…

Ooh, this definitely struck a chord in me, as I fall right into that stereotype.

I was forced to play piano for 10 years and to do all those recitals and music theory tests. I could never wiggle myself out of it because of all the guilt-tripping. So of course, I went to college and promptly dropped all of it.

And unexpectedly, nearly a decade later, this pandemic thing happened, I returned to piano, recently bought a digital piano, and found a teacher. I practice 1-2 hours every day. And a lot of those skills I thought I would have lost returned pretty quickly.

I have a lot of complicated emotions around this that I haven’t really quite figured out. But if I were to summarize them at their current stage, they’d be something like: (1) I am grateful that I was pushed to learn this instrument, (2) I realized I really disliked my childhood piano teacher, (3) my parents failed to recognize that for 10 years (as evidenced by never presenting the option of finding someone else), and (4) playing to inflate someone else’s ego is absolutely demotivating.

One of the unfortunate effects is that roughly 1/3rd of Mozart’s sonatas are unplayable because I have some bad memories associated with them. Fortunately, there’s plenty of music in the world that don’t trigger those feelings, and I am so glad that I didn’t play that much Chopin back then.

Maybe that might help? I’m not a parent, so consider these raw ideas that need some work to become parenting advice.

Re: I was forced to be a child star. It was never my dream or my idea

#173

Post by t-writescode »

ComradePhil wrote: post #170

Quoted post unavailable.

Perfectly fine thing to argue. Wrong place for it.

edit: It's like wearing a nicer dress to the wedding than the bride, or a friend coming to you for help and you instead telling them how much worse your life is than theirs.

Re: I was forced to be a child star. It was never my dream or my idea

#174

Post by warbucks »

justsomeguy123 wrote: post #95

Quoted post unavailable.

Wil's character on TNG was my least favorite, even as a kid watching TNG growing up, but I don't believe that is his fault. Clearly the writers did not know what to do with him, and its likely his performance is a result of whatever direction he was given. In the later seasons, particularly in his final episode regardless of the ridiculous "traveler" storyline, his acting is much better, likely as a result of older and more easily relatable. I guess this is all to say he was good at acting, you only need to watch "Stand By Me" to see that. If he had been worse at it its likely his mother would not have been so successful at forcing him to continue to do it.

Re: I was forced to be a child star. It was never my dream or my idea

#175

Post by pjc50 »

mavhc wrote: post #15
BarryMilo wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People don't want to believe. I try to explain to my friends why I won't watch anything with children as prominent characters, but they generally don't want to hear it, because "Stranger Things is so good" or something. Hollywood is the land of depravity and abuse. It's no place for children.

And Stranger Things isn't good, it's just a mashup of 80s films that are at least twice as old as the actors, no original ideas at all. The problem is more celebrity rather than the filming process. Make it illegal to report any "news", ie gossip, about anyone under 18 for a start.

The media coverage of child stars is a large part of the harm, and social media makes this worse.

Re: I was forced to be a child star. It was never my dream or my idea

#176

Post by pjc50 »

silisili wrote: post #119

I feel really conflicted on this one. On the surface, he's right, let kids be kids. But parents almost always overstep their bounds to do what they think is best for their child. We've all heard of Tiger Moms, and parents basically forcing their kids into being a doctor for their own good. When it fails, it fails spectacularly, but it often doesn't fail. Is it wrong that a child was forced into something that gave th…

> great life?

The only person really qualified to say whether or not it's great is the person themselves.

Re: I was forced to be a child star. It was never my dream or my idea

#177

Post by spoiler »

silisili wrote: post #142
spoiler wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is it wrong that a child was forced into something that gave them a great life? There's a difference between encouragement and support and forcing. Forcing is never good or healthy. It's always abuse, no matter the mental gymnastics involved we use self-rationalise traumatic childhoods. It's no different from me forcong you right now to do something. Parents don't own their children. They can buy a doll if they wan…

It's a really hard line to draw. When you realize mistakes you made as a kid and young adult, the pain or disadvantages it caused...and you love a little creature so much you never want them to experience that, it's easy to overstep bounds. Not that that's here nor there if the framing of the story is true. But we all know there are three sides to every story.

I understand the impulse of wanting to prevent suffering, and even to some extent to prevent mistakes. However, mistakes are how children learn. You make a mistake, you learn not to do it again. That is also how you learn to cope (which is a critical skill in adulthood) with emotions and consequences. These children then go on to make mistakes in adulthood, and they don't have the necessary emotional framework to healthily cope; this leads to more mistakes, etc. Also, these people never, well, "learned" how to learn from their mistakes either. So they self-blame, self-hate, and repeat the same mistakes.

Let children make mistakes, but provide a support net for them to go back. Let them deal with the consequences, but also show compassion, explain why this happened (and it involves other people how it made other people feel), and SHOW them how to do better. If you reprimand children, also make sure you praise them.

Parents are there to teach children how to live their own life, not tell them how to live a life the parent wants.

Of course, there are some mistakes you will want to prevent, like letting your kid run into ongoing traffic, etc. But we're not talking about life-threatening mistakes.

This is obviously harder and more "stressful" than just locking your kids up (and this isn't even just a dysphemism; this happens through repeated emotional abuse), and shouting at them "do this, do that or nobody will love you". That's not parenting, that's just fucking sick.

Re: I was forced to be a child star. It was never my dream or my idea

#178

Post by coldtea »

kibibyte wrote: post #172
irjustin wrote: post #8

Wow Will was such a part of my childhood watching Star Trek. Obviously, he didn't appear often but he was memorable simply because there were so few people as young as him on the show. Sad to hear this all around. This also brought back memories of me being required to play piano growing up. I hated piano, performing (recitals), playing in general. I was terrrribbleee (still am) and was put up in lessons for 12 years…

Ooh, this definitely struck a chord in me, as I fall right into that stereotype. I was forced to play piano for 10 years and to do all those recitals and music theory tests. I could never wiggle myself out of it because of all the guilt-tripping. So of course, I went to college and promptly dropped all of it. And unexpectedly, nearly a decade later, this pandemic thing happened, I returned to piano, recently bought a…

>my parents failed to recognize that for 10 years (as evidenced by never presenting the option of finding someone else)

Well, in this case tho, did you ever suggest it? I mean, if it was a matter of disliking the material or the teaching style, but otherwise those lessons weren't in bad form, abusive, etc., so they couldn't see anything bad about them, how would they know?

Re: I was forced to be a child star. It was never my dream or my idea

#179

Post by ciphol »

true_religion wrote: post #103
wahern wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Music is a very "asian" or "chinese" thing to put your child through. Asian culture simply adopted American and English culture in this regard. In the United States circa 1950s and 1960s it was very common for children to be taking piano lessons, and owning a piano was also relatively common. Both the lessons and the piano itself were important status symbols, and having both were considered markers of being middle…

> Asian culture simply adopted American and English culture in this regard Since the OP mentioned China specifically, I think it’s good to note that the Chinese elite have venerated art for millennia. Poetry writing, singing, and playing musical instruments were a staple of every young nobles education during the times of the Imperial dynasties. It’s not at all something simply copied from the British during coloniza…

I think every civilization's elite venerated art.

Re: I was forced to be a child star. It was never my dream or my idea

#180

Post by jstummbillig »

seunosewa wrote: post #162
pronlover723 wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are tons of adults that are thankful their parents forced them to learn something (a second language, a musical instrument, ...). There are also tons of adults forever angry at themselves for complaining to the point their parents let them stop studying whatever "it" was. I learned Japanese as an adult. I know at least 3 Americans of Japanese descent angry at themselves for complaining to their parents to let t…

I think the answer is to let them try different things. There's going to be something that they like better than the others. If they keep begging you to stop making them do a thing, that's a clue that it's not the right one.

In the beginning giving up early seems like no big deal to the parent. At some point they might get a little uneasy. Are you maybe inadvertently teaching your child that giving up is okay by giving in too early and often? On the flip side, being increasingly heavy handed about finally sticking with the current thing because you are also battling with your own sense of time getting short to teach persistence seems problematic.

Tricky.

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