While the Children are Being Judged: Opportunities to Build Attachment

The following is a personal experience I encountered this Spring. It changed the way I think about children's performances and competitions as I realized they are fundamentally, opportunities for parents to enhance their emotional connection with their kids.

Sitting quietly in the car, I wondered how my daughter would handle her first public piano performance. We arrived early to the Kiwanis Festival and were invited to watch another piano competition while we waited. Before we entered the recital hall, I asked her a few times if she needed to use the bathroom and she responded each time with a clear “No.”

The Kiwanis Festival is a regional competition where children perform music and receive feedback from an adjudicator, with prizes awarded to the top performers. For many students it is their first time performing on stage. Not surprisingly, their emotions may begin as anxiety, excitement or even dread, followed by relief, calm, delight, or disappointment once their song has come to an end. Parents may be experiencing similar emotions. 

Given this situation, I realized that the Kiwanis Festival is a perfect opportunity for parents to provide emotional security for their child. As children return to their seat, parental gestures of love and support emphasize their secure attachment. Whether the performance is perfect, or not, what children remember from these emotional moments is how they were received by their family upon their return. That positive security is what will enable them to take bigger steps and tolerate new discomforts in the future.

"While the adjudicator was writing their assessment of the children, I was "adjudicating" the parents!"

My hope and expectation for my 8-year-old daughter was for her to feel proud of herself for having participated in the competition and interested in performing again in the future. I was curious how she would handle the potential butterflies in her stomach, as I recalled the anxiety I experienced when I played in the Festival at the age of 9. 

We took our seats and watched how the competition unfolded. After a student performs their piece from memory, they are applauded and then sit down while the adjudicator takes time to complete their assessment. It was during those quiet minutes between performers that I noticed something unexpected. While the adjudicator was writing their assessment of the children, I was “adjudicating” the parents on how they responded to their child. I observed a wide variety of parental reactions, that I would have scored anywhere from 10 to 90 out of 100.

Difficult parent reactions

The first reaction that captured my attention happened when a girl returned to her seat after a difficult performance. She had stalled, forgotten notes, yet persevered to the end.

She walked back to her seat with eyes on her mother. I too looked at her mother and was in disbelief at the look on her face. Instead of holding out her hand, the mom seemed to recoil. She then turned her whole body away from the child, in what looked like disgust. The child needed comfort, not shame. 

A few performances later a young boy had made a few mistakes, and he himself seemed disappointed as he walked back to his chair. Through the mother’s tone, she appeared to be scolding him for his performance. She kept her eye and disappointment on him; he turned away. As the competition went on, I noticed some tears in his eyes and then he placed his head on her shoulder while she held his hand as she shifted to respond more tenderly. 

Then a boy walked up to the piano and played a whimsical song nearly perfectly. Perhaps if it were long enough, it may have shifted the mood in the room; music has a tendency to do that. When he returned to his seat close to mine and next to his grandmother, I had imagined a hug, a high-five, maybe even a whisper. The boy sat down beside her, legs swinging softly, hands folded on his lap. He waited. His grandmother remained still. Staring at her, I started to feel compassion for the other parents; perhaps they suffered from the insult of disappointment and disgust when they were kids.

The festival is a celebration of hard work, new experiences, students’ talent and bravery, and a moment of true connection for families.

The festival is a celebration of hard work, new experiences, students’ talent and bravery, and a moment of true connection for families. Children will walk away from this competition remembering how their parents reacted and whether it felt warm and safe, or cold and painful. The good news is that even cold and painful memories can be thawed by the warmth of parental affection the next time around. Parents are not meant to be perfect; I will falter too. Parenting, after all, is full of second chances. 

What I remember most about my Kiwanis experience as a kid was not the song I played or the score I received but was how my older sister acknowledged my anxiety and rescued me from greater embarrassment. Once I finally exited the bathroom to enter the theatre hall, my sister stopped me and whispered, “Andrew, you’re going to be okay, but I think there is poop on the back of your pants.” Yikes. Back to the washroom, I went. 

Finally, after all that, it was my daughter’s turn to play the piano. My initial anxiety for her as a parent had evolved so much at this point that I sat there with nothing but pride. My eyes followed hers; I’m not sure I even heard the notes. When she finished and placed her hands on her lap, she looked at me and smiled and there I was with two thumbs up. At that moment, I hoped to have earned a passing grade.