Our daughter has been interested in visual arts her entire life, and we have always provided essentially universal praise of her artwork. By that I mean encouragement, appreciation, and generally letting her know what she draws is delightful and wonderful and good. She has never had any kind of formal lessons or training/classes, outside of art class in school.However she's 14 now, in her Freshman year of high school, and is getting more and more serious about pursuing a career in animation or the visual arts. At some point we have to start instilling the idea that natural talent is not enough to have a real career in the field. We also have to prepare her for the fact that the real world may not always embrace what she does or think it's great. Realistically speaking, we may love what she does, but she's not picked up any actual skill sets or improved from what she was doing when she was 10.How do you balance that need to be universally supportive with setting realistic expectations for the road ahead? How do you say, at the same time, "We love what you do and think it's great but if you want to turn this into a career you need LOTS of training, focus and hard work to improve"? What age is the right age to start imparting this information?Both of us as parents have careers in the arts - graphic design and acting, respectively - so we know the road ahead is a difficult one filled with heartbreak, struggle and years and years of rejection. We've both learned the hard lesson of the difference between what you dreamed your artistic career would be versus the reality of making that type of career work without losing your passion. We know better than to say things like "Have a backup plan" or "Do you think you're good enough to turn this into a job?", because we had parents who said things like that to us. But we do want our kid to have a clear understanding of the reality of the path she seems to be choosing. via /r/Parenting https://ift.tt/2y4amWI
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