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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

#261

Post by hammock »

simonh wrote: post #252
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…

My daughters took piano lessons and it really didn't work out, they never really enjoyed it and when the pandemic hit that was it. In retrospect I think having them do grades was a mistake. They enjoyed music and one of them even started a band with friends at school, but doing the grades was a grind. If they'd taken just fun lessons learning different types of music I think thing would have worked out very different…

Don’t be too hard on yourself

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

#262

Post by alexktz »

dwighttk wrote: post #240
laurieg wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think a lot about how much pushing is the right amount. When I was very young I had piano lessons. My memories are only dim, but I think I enjoyed them. I also gave them up quite quickly. I distinctly remember trying to play a little tune and messing it up again and again. I didn't have the skills to deal with my frustration and anger. I didn't have the perseverance. Perhaps if someone had helped me through this I…

The movie Whiplash looks into this question. It goes to the extreme, and while I never had anything like abuse in my school music career there were a few spots that made me think back. It is an intense movie, but I think well done.

My experience at music conservatory in England was very close to the bone on this movie. It was painful to watch in many ways, so in respect it’s well done and an accurate representation of the egotistical way things work in this world professionally.

Most music colleges have a suicide garden because the pressure is so intense. A suicide garden for a place inhabited by mostly teenagers. Think about that for a sec.

Ultimately I gave up on being a professional musician because I graduated in 2008, once you graduate you realise you’re competing against everyone else in the world and that’s much harder than just your peers, and IT reliable pay cheques were comfortable.

I’m a happy hobby musician these days but it took me nearly a decade to start enjoying to play music again after the competitive rat race of music college.

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

#263

Post by nurettin »

zepolen wrote: post #94
nurettin wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish I was pushed as a child to play the piano. And I did it for my child. He endured it for a year. He's talented and he's at the beginner's level, but when we observed closely, he didn't want to practise. He only did it when we threatened him with stopping the lessons. So we just let it go. Now we have a piano at the house. He sometimes plays whatever he likes. Maybe he will pick it up later in his life. Maybe I…

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

#264

Post by sjsdaiuasgdia »

heyflyguy wrote: post #257

Tough read. Part of getting older seems like letting go of these bothersome memories and loving someone in spite of it. I hurt for this family that may never reconcile. The mom wants to believe she did right and won't apologize. Wil wants her to admit what really happened, which she may never do. She'll die someday and this may still be unresolved, which is the real tragedy. Being the bigger person isn't always easy,…

Where's the line between being the bigger person and being an enabler?

Implicitly approving of abusive behavior by not challenging it will tend to lead towards that behavior continuing to be accepted in the world, all in the name of decorum.

We're decoruming ourselves into the ground. It's time to be the better people - by putting an end to abuse.

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

#265

Post by matthewdgreen »

MisterBastahrd wrote: post #190
gjulianm wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not "I wish I didn't lose a few life experiences". Will Wheaton has expressed several times that he has severe chronic depression and anxiety. There's a lot of range between "can't pay rent" and "severely depressed millionaire" and I don't think people want either of those extremes.

Millions of people have severe chronic depression and anxiety. Most of them don't have the resources to get treatment, they don't write memoirs that get republished, they don't end up getting an interview on Access Hollywood to talk about what a shit childhood they had, and they don't have a megaphone to throw their parents under the bus while enriching themselves from the legacy that was only possible because of the…

What he's doing is calling attention to a particular pattern of child abuse that still occurs today.

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

#267

Post by tinco »

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...

Fantastic Beasts is a great movie. It's an original plot and not a sequel to anything so I don't get why you throw it in with those other movies. With as much bland repetitiveness there is in the average Hollywood movie Fantastic Beasts definitely is the wrong one to rip on.

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

#268

Post by Lendal »

jazzythom wrote: post #17

My parents pushed me hard, but sent me to a liberal arts school, and I’m hardwired for engineering. Hilarity ensued. The grinding of gears was a memory I would pay to erase. Deeply resent spending hours every day learning languages for countries I had no interest in visiting and how glaciers formed. What a waste of my finite precious time. If only I could go back I’d run out the gate and get on a train never to be se…

Airing it in public isn't going to work for him. I had similar kinds of problems. Nothing I said or did worked so I just stopped talking about it. My mom would call me and I would politely talk to her about the weather and things like that, but nothing else. Now she's gone. We never could work out our issues. Most normal people accept that there are limits to what we can accomplish in our lives. Rich powerful people don't accept that truth, and keep trying to get what they want. But you can't always get what you want. So that's gonna be a hard lesson for Wil I think.

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

#269

Post by CamelCaseName »

Kaze404 wrote: post #251
throw0101a wrote: post #236

See also Jennette McCurdy of iCarly fame: * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VY63dB6-Uwk For an idea on how badly she thought about the child stardom, she named her memoir I'm Glad My Mom Died : > Jennette McCurdy was six years old when she had her first acting audition. Her mother’s dream was for her only daughter to become a star, and Jennette would do anything to make her mother happy. So she went along with what M…

It probably doesn't help either that her biggest role was a Dan Schneider show of all people.

I'm not familiar, so I searched him up. Is this what you're referring to?

> Then, in March 2018, Schneider's time at Nickelodeon suddenly ended amid allegations of verbal abuse and questionable treatment of the young stars who appeared on his shows

Source: https://www.looper.com/618303/the-dan-schneider-controversy-...

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