Eric:

Today we are joined by Doctor Alaina Johnson. Doctor Johnson is a psychologist with over 20 years of clinical experience. As a parent of three children who are passionate about the creative arts, she recognized the lack of resources for parents of teens and tweens with similar interests. This led her to found Parenting Talent LLC as a support resource for parents, instructors, mentors and studio owners dedicated to empowering young people in their creative exploration. Doctor Alaina is the author of parenting talent The grown-ups Guide to Supporting Creatively Driven Teens and Tweens, which helps parents and mentors navigate the emotional and practical needs of teens and tweens in the arts. Welcome to the show, Doctor Alaina. 

Alaina:

Well, thank you so much for having me. 

Eric:

Now, Doctor Alaina, tell us a little about yourself and your journey with the Fine Arts that led you to writing your book and creating such an amazing support resource. 

Alaina:

Absolutely, I'd be happy to. So I dabbled in the arts, Creative arts myself. I played the flute most of elementary school and all through high school, and actually considered majoring in music during college. Ultimately switched to psychology major, but I did consider it. So when I became a mom, I had a general idea that I wanted my children to have some kind of connection to the arts. I had also done other things, like I had taken art lessons and just various times I had done things. 

I just thought it really enhanced a lot of things in my life. So it was important to me at the very least that they all learn an instrument, ideally piano. Just I thought it'd be great for them to be able to read both Treble Clef and Bass Clef, but I didn't have a real clear picture of anything beyond that per se. 

Fast forward to when I had my children, I wound up being the mom of three boys and the minute you are told each time it's a boy, which is such a stereotype and absolutely should not have thought this way, but it was kind of like, oh, guess we'll be doing a lot of sports. So once we are kind of,   and they started getting a little older. We live in the suburbs of Chicago and I think true to many suburban kind of lifestyles, sports is a big part of the culture. So it was very easy to get them involved at a very young age. And so with my oldest, we just enrolled him and he loved it and he was good at it. 

At the same time, he started piano lessons and he absolutely loved and enjoyed those as well. 

We get to my second son. Who did not love sports had no interest, he said. As I like to tell people with six year old wisdom, why would I want to play a sport where somebody throws a ball at my head? That was his approach to baseball, so he had no interest. So we said fine, no problem, you don't have to do that. And we did at one point kind of say, hey, all your friends are involved in some sports, you just want to try soccer.  He said Sure. And I remember my husband and I were watching him and we were kind of laughing, thinking, hmm, how's this going to go? And Long story short, we were right. By the end of it, he was picking flowers in the grass while the game was going around him, so. Zero interest. 

My youngest was more like my oldest. He had an interest. He kind of dabbled in it, liked it, wasn't sure it was, you know, all he wanted to do. He also did other things. But it wasn't as dominating as I thought it would be. Um. 

Meanwhile, my oldest was taking piano lessons. He was loving them. He really enjoyed everything about them. And our middle son surprised the heck out of us when we found out that he could actually belt in tune at 3 1/2 years old. We had no idea. When we heard him, we actually thought it was our oldest, just based on age, singing. And then we were even surprised that our oldest could sing. He never stopped. He loves everything about the arts. He just, I'm sorry, my middle one. He never stopped. That's all he wanted to do. He wanted to do things in the arts. He wanted to sing, he wanted to dance. He liked musical theater. That was what he was into. And he kind of led the charge in terms of this is going to be a big part of some of the things that are happening in our lives. 

So as he started getting super interested in that, I'm a natural researcher. That's what I do. I research, I look for things, I look for information. That's part of how I just kind of like to map things out. And when I was researching, there just wasn't a lot of information out there. I could find a lot of information on how to help your children become creative or more interested In creative arts. I didn't see a lot out there about what to do with kids who are already interested in creativity and the creative arts, and how to support that and nurture that in a different way. 

So, I kind of let go of finding it and just kind of muddled my way through and figured it out and tried to find as many classes and things we could for him. Meanwhile, my oldest was taking piano lessons and said hey, can I also get a guitar? And he said I'm going to teach myself guitar. And he started working on teaching himself guitar. And then he asked for lessons. By this point, the middle one had been begging, begging, begging to get more serious in on the arts and acting. So he actually asked us if he could get an agent. We said you didn't know. You don't even know what that is. There's no way. And he said, yeah, yeah, I do, It's somebody to get me on TV, right? 

And when we picked our jaws up off the floor, we said no. What we actually said was no, those kids are weird and their parents are weirder. Fast forward, I became the weirder parent. Just letting you know. But he really wanted it to a point that he asked for it for years and years and years on end. So finally we acquiesced when he was seven and said, OK, if you really want to try, we'll submit you. We'll see what happens, but I don't know if it's going to go anywhere. 

He was able to find representation. My youngest got dragged to a lot of those auditions and he started getting interested in that end of things. So now I have three kids interested in various types of arts. My oldest gets in the middle school. We have a very strong theater program. He got into their musical theater program and at some point my husband looked up and we realized. We thought there was going to be a whole lot of cleats in our life and in our front hall and what we were finding was there was a whole lot of jazz shoes, tap shoes, guitar picks, amps. So that was our world. 

Continue to look for resources. Hey, how do I do this? How do I support this? Trying to make a very long story a little bit shorter, my middle son wound up with the opportunity of a lifetime and he auditioned for and was cast as Young Simba in Lion King on Broadway. So that yeah, that really upended everything because it meant I was closing my private practice. It meant we were going to be in New York. 

During our time there, amazing experience. He had the time of his life. Unforgettable, learned so many things, and I was around all these kids who were this serious about the arts and a lot of parents who were saying the same things I was in terms of there's not a lot of support out there. How do we do this? What? What? How do we nurture this? How do we find the balance? How do we make sense of when they say they love it, but at the same time they seem to really be melting down about something, or very frustrated or don't want to practice, Or when they don't want to practice and we say, you know what, maybe you need to take a break. And then no, I love it. I love it.

That kind of got me thinking about, you know. It'd be really great to have some kind of resource out there for parents. And I started kind of in the back of my mind keeping notes and thinking, what are some of the topics that keep coming up over and over again, conversations I was having. And Fast forward during the pandemic, I kind of recognized that I have some free time. I actually did not write it during lockdown. I did not. But that gave me time to kind of solidify all the ideas around it. And right after that, I wrote the book. And yeah, it's kind of a great experience to write it, to kind of bring together all the knowledge between being a therapist and being a mom and talking to a lot of other parents and saying, hey. What are the things that we wish we had known when our children were younger? 

Eric:

I'm very glad that you did write this. I do want to go into a personal, very quick story of my own. My wife and I both grew up as musicians to non musician families and going to college, even in high school trying to get lessons or anything else in a very rural area in small town America, there is not much information for our parents and they were completely lost most of the time and they relied on our music teachers to kind of guide us the way.  And well, our music teachers point us in the same direction they went. And so it was very limited in some ways too. 

But as far as my mom or her parents taking care of us and knowing how to. Talk with us or know what's going on in our hands or anything else, they just really left us alone for most of the time and said you go do your thing. And I know parents today are very much more hands on. They really want to be involved in their child's lives. They're making it a priority to do so. And so this book definitely gives an opportunity for them to really focus on what the children I think are going through and experiencing, especially for those that haven't been through that experience. 

Alaina:

Absolutely. That's exactly who I was thinking of. I was thinking of the parents who had. Very little exposure or background in the arts. As well as- I interviewed parents throughout this, that was part of one of the things I thought was really important to kind of really get people to understand how varied the experiences can be. And talking to parents in more rural areas, that is one of the things that they would struggle with is how do I build community for my child? How do I know that you know if there's only one piano teacher in town and my kid loves piano but says they don't love their lessons. Is that my kid? Is that the teacher? Is it a bad match? Is there something else? 

And it's so wonderful to hear you say that because that's really who I wanted to speak to primarily. It definitely speaks to other people. It speaks to educators, It speaks to mentors. I know that people involved with my kids have said they've loved having it, but that was my primary audience. 

Eric: 

I definitely want to get into that aspect of how teachers, especially new teachers, could take this information and really find out how they connect with students. But I want to do that later. First, I want to talk about your book a little deeper. In the book you talk about perfectionism and in the arts. I mean, you can't be anything but perfect to be successful, at least that's the mentality that often it gets, you know, cascaded down. So how can that impact a young artist and how they show up? 

Alaina:

Oh yes, this is a big topic and one I very much enjoy talking about. A lot of times I like to talk about it because perfectionism, often, in most cases, it's coming from a place of a fear of failure. But what happens a lot of times with perfectionism is it can really masquerade as procrastination. So parents get confused when their child says, oh, I love this art, or teachers get confused when they hear, oh, I really want to do this, but they're doing none of the tasks that are necessary to actually make progress in what they're doing. 

So. Perfectionism. It can really play a big part in how students progress or don't progress and that kind of tension between saying I am really passionate about this, I really love this, and then doing nothing. If you're a perfectionist, you kind of understand this. We can get kind of caught up too much in the little minute details and perfectionism. There's different types of perfectionism, and I do go into that in my book, and some of it's internal, some of it can be external. But at the end of the day, it doesn't really matter if we get stuck because we're almost scared to try, because we don't think we can get make that progress or make it the way we want it to sound or be. Or, you know, we can't get the dance move exactly the way we want. We can't get the painting to look exactly as perfect as it is in our head. It's easier sometimes not to try. And so that's definitely something I think parents and teachers can relate to when they see a student who seems to like something and maybe does have a lot of skills or talent in that area, but seems a little frozen. 

Eric:

In the classroom, we try to focus on making it a safe environment to make mistakes. Is it kind of going to the I guess the child's head too? Is it safe for them to make mistakes? Is it something that they're comfortable with or does it go beyond that a little bit deeper? Or is it something just like you said, external factors as well? 

Alaina: 

It can be both. With perfectionism, there's a lot of internal dialogue that can be happening. So even if the teachers have done everything they can to make that classroom as safe of a space as they can, they can get into their own heads. And there's nothing you're going to say or do in that exact moment necessarily that's going to get them over that hurdle. That doesn't mean that it can't be done in a larger context, but if you see a kid really pulling back or getting stuck, you know, just saying, oh, this is a safe place and it's OK to make mistakes. 

They're thinking, no, it's not. It's not. Maybe it's OK for other people to make mistakes, but it's not OK for me to make a mistake. So there's this real fear of risking. Failure. 

There's also a lot of what's going on developmentally and some of this kind of shifts as they get a little older. Younger children tend to be very focused on what their teachers think of them. That's kind of their world. And they and that can actually work to your favor because if the teacher says I really want you to sing this, they're going to say OK, because I want to please the teacher. As they get a little older, as they move into the tween years, it shifts. And they become much more focused on what their peers think. So suddenly you know, belting full force out of tune because my teacher says it doesn't matter, I just want you to do a great job works, where suddenly they get to middle school and they look at you and say there is no way. I know I can't hit that note and I am not about to do that in front of my friends. 

Or if they're in a situation, and this came up several times in the book, sort of what you were speaking to in terms of finding community in a more rural area. If you're somewhere where there's not a lot of kids into the arts, it just may not be understood or socially acceptable. So that at a certain age is a much stronger pull for some kids than their love of their art. 

So you know, it might be confusing to you as a teacher when a parent saying I don't understand this kid, that's all they do at home. They're singing 24/7 or they're playing their instrument 24/7. And then they get into your classroom and they won't do anything. But that can be that that's what they're concerned about, is how do I look in front of my peers? Because their opinion matters to me more than anything right now, and that's perfectly normal developmentally. 

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Eric:

And you talk about mindset, and teaching young artists how competence is developed can help them break away from a fixed mindset. Speak on the mindset part of it, a little bit more too, and especially how it relates to that. 

Alaina:

Absolutely. Um, so really quickly, I think that. For the most part, especially with educators very familiar with mindset and what it is. It is interesting because parents of a certain generation closer to mine may not be as familiar of it because it wasn't something that was kind of interwoven into our educational experience, whereas nowadays it feels like there's much more awareness of what mindset is. So just really briefly. Mindset is just our internal belief about our intellect, how we learn, and our ability to learn new skills. 

And so there's kind of two different types of mindset. There's what's called a fixed mindset. And when someone has a fixed mindset, you believe that your skills, your abilities, your intellect, all of those things are rigid and ingrained. So you're born with them. And you are incapable of changing them. So you kind of either got it or you don't. 

A growth mindset, on the other hand. Is this approach of thinking, yeah, I can change this, I can influence this, I can work really hard, if I put a lot of effort in, if I stick with it, I can change things. So that's kind of the difference between a growth mindset and a fixed mindset. 

So the obvious thing is when we're talking about a fixed mindset, how that's going to kind of play out. So you can see that when somebody has a fixed mindset, when you're dealing with a student who just believes, there's nothing I can do, I'm not talented, a word that I think is very loaded, which I can get into in a little bit. But you know, they have this idea that I'm not talented, so I'm not going to be able to do this. 

If that's what they're believing, then sometimes if you can get them a little familiar with how the process of learning new skill sets develops, they can kind of shift away from that a little bit. So one of the things I will do sometimes when I'm working with a teen or tween where they're really feeling stuck is I'll kind of take them through the stages of skill building. And I will explain to them, You know, there's these five different stages, and everyone goes through them. This is how we learn. 

So I'll explain to them that, you know, stage one is kind of this Ignorance is bliss. It's just. I don't know what I don't know. And it can be really fun to be in that stage because you know you can just sing and you know just having fun with it. It doesn't matter if your techniques are not great, doesn't matter if you're not perfectly in tune. You're just having a lot of fun and you may not even realize there's things that you need to do to change things and get a little bit better.

In the next stage, Stage two. It's called conscious incompetence. It's that you suddenly realize, oh, you do have a lot of learning to do. There's things you need to do, and this is where teachers can really be helpful because, you know, said in a most kind, gentle, appropriate, nurturing way. Hey, you know, we can take this really fun thing and you can really get better at it. But here's some things you're going to have to do. And suddenly that recognition of oh. Yeah, I've got to work at this. So that's stage 2. Um, it could be. Not nearly as much fun, though, because you're suddenly being pushed outside your zone of comfort. 

Stage 3 is a conscious competence. So when you're in conscious competence, you're kind of consistently inconsistent. This is when students are working on things. Sometimes they nail it, sometimes they don't. It's not quite mastered, but if they're putting a lot of mental energy into what they're doing, if they're thinking about it, they're able to do it. And when I'm working with educators, you know, I'd like to use the example of when you first learn how to drive, there's a stage where you can drive, you're confident, but you're still having to really think about everything. It doesn't come completely naturally. You're you're, it's. And it takes a lot of energy because you're kind of, oh, I've got to make sure I'm looking and I'm thinking and I'm doing all the things. And everything's got to be adjusted in a certain way. And if my mirror is the wrong way, I can get in my head and it doesn't feel right. And that's kind of where conscious competence comes in. When you're thinking of somebody learning an art, it's the same thing. They have all the different parts. They know how to do them. But it takes a lot of work. 

And then stage 4 is conscious mastery. This is where students can demonstrate the skill consistently. They have some degree of focused attention on it, but you know, and if they're distracted, they may not perform as well. But in general, they do really well with it. And this is where a lot of students, you know, if they can get to this place, it's fun again. This is where it's like, OK, I nailed that skill. I I really did learn something and this feels good to me. 

And then the last age is unconscious mastery. That's that place where it's habit. You don't have to think about it. It's the drive to work that you've done 1000 times and you get there. You don't even know how you got there because you just, you know what you're doing. You know how to just kind of tune out because it just comes so naturally to you. 

So when you're working with students, what I have found in when I'm talking to teens and tweens, if I can get them to understand this, it can kind of take that fixed mindset and they can say, oh wait. Everybody goes through this? Even people who are naturally talented go through this? And I say yes, this is the process. And guess what? Everybody does it over and over and over and over again. And it's kind of fun when I've worked with teams for a while, especially if I worked with them through their tween years and now they're teens and they can see that where it's happened, over and over. We can go back and say, oh, remember that first time when you were really scared to try out for the play, the musical, the School Musical? And you thought you couldn't do it. You didn't have the skills, and now you've got the lead. Let's go back and look at how many times you kind of went through that mastery, that process of learning. 

And so that can help them switch from oh. OK, I can have a growth mindset about this. There is a process. I can change these things. There is hope, so to speak. 

Eric:

That's quite a very accurate, real way of looking at those.  One of the things that popped in my head is that as musicians, we constantly want to sort of stay between stage 3-4 and five to challenge ourselves. We want to really push. We don't want to be so automatic that we're not creating things, but we have to really be pushing ourselves and sort of balance in that. That really becomes. It's, it's comfortable. It becomes comfortable, I should say. But it's also very uncomfortable to realize, OK, yes, I'm still not there. Yes, I'm still not there. Yes, I'm still not there. It's always something to drive towards. And so you're nodding your head yes and yes and and I'm picking up on some really good stuff there. Tell us a little bit about your ideas with that. 

Alaina:

Well, I'm just thinking about how often. In the arts, I think especially if you're going to have students who are really serious about pursuing the arts, it's going to be really important for them to understand that there is always something to learn, that if they talk to the people they look up to in the arts and they say, when did you feel you really finally got it? Everyone of them is probably gonna look at them and say I still don't feel like I've really totally got it. There's always something you can be working on. There's always something new to learn and that's really important, actually.

I alluded to the fact that I don't love the word talent, which is really ironic with the title of my book. But I do talk about it. I dedicate what the first chapter to kind of talking about I call the talent trap. And that's this idea that it kind of goes back to the fixed mindset that talent is innate. And I think that if we're not careful about how the word is used, it's not giving enough credit to the constant work, the constant skill building, the constant dedication that it really takes to appear talented when actually, there's a lot that's going behind, going on behind that. And that there is always something else to be doing to learning to get better. So the most talented musician out there, when you speak to them, they're going to say, I still practice. I still have these things I need to work on. Here's the thing that still needs to get better and they kind of do this cyclical thing. 

To your point, it can be kind of a love, hate relationship. There's parts of it that feel really great where you're trying to stay there and it's like, I got this. And then there's the part that sometimes can feel a little frustrating of like, well, what am I going to feel like I kind of do really have this? This is good?  I'm, I'm ready. And I do kind of try to talk to teens like if that's your goal, this may not be the career for you, because that's not how it works. 

But if the goal is to constantly stay in creativity and learning, and you love the feeling of mastery when you kind of master a new thing and you kind of get that high every time you can look back and say that you've done that, then it might be a good match for you. 

Eric:

I love the way you put that in there, too. And I love the way you took talent. And because you're absolutely right about that. And that's actually my pet peeve when someone says, oh, your kids are so talented. I'm like, no, they're not. They work their butts off to get this far. Not one of them is talented enough to do this without working at it and including me. You know, and and like, oh, you're such a talented teacher. Like, no. I've been working for 20 years to do this and so I'm glad that you said the same thing. It's a hard concept to get out of some people's heads.

Alaina:

Because people use it as a compliment. It is a compliment. They mean it in a sincere way. But I also like to kind of just make sure that they understand that, you know, when somebody comes up to me says, oh, your kids are so talented. I said yes. They no doubt that they were born with natural affinities for certain things. But to get to the levels that they want to achieve, there's a lot of work that's going on behind the scenes and a lot of that work, it's not fun. It's not fun. That's another thing that when kids who… 

It can almost be a disservice when a child is born, kind of with that natural affinity. Because when you're really young, you're getting all this praise. Oh, you're such a beautiful voice. Oh, that's so amazing. And then as you get a little bit older and somebody comes in and says, you know, kind of like going back to that stage two I was talking about and someone says you're really good, but you could be better. And there's some things we need to work on. And actually you're going to get stuck at this place if you don't, start doing some of these things. That's hard. That's hard if somebody's always told you how great you are to finally have to say, oh wait, there's some work that has to go. So even though I'm talented, that's not going to carry me all the way through that I actually am going to have to put in time, effort and energy. And you know what? Some of this is not fun. You know, scales for a lot of kids? Not fun. Just not. It's not the fun part. It's a very, very foundational part to skill building. 

Eric:

With all of this in mind, Especially about the growth mindset and the fixed mindset on there, when young artists are aware of how competence is built, like we've been discussing through here that the cycles and it's just getting the mastery and then you're going to start over again. What happens when you don't see a shift into that growth mindset? What could be some things that cause students or kids just to be stuck? 

Alaina:

Usually. What I find, which is probably not going to surprise you as an educator, is the two biggies that a lot of our kids are struggling with, and it's usually either fear or anxiety. So it becomes really important to kind of educate our teens and tweens about fear and anxiety. I think, you know, everyone feels like they understand it kind of on a very superficial level. But, I will get tweens going, coming in, going. I don't understand because I really do love this art that I'm engaged in. So why do I get so nervous? Or why do I get so worried? Or why do I freeze up so? 

One of the things I really talk to students about and educators about is Fear and anxiety are hardwired. These are things that evolutionarily served a purpose at one time in our life. So we are really, really rewarded by our brains for doing what's familiar and doing what we're competent at. Because if we do what's familiar and we're competent at, guess what, we stayed alive. So our brains are going to say, well, that works to keep us alive. We're going to do that again and don't do anything different because that may not keep us alive. So on that very primitive level, that's how we're wired. 

And when you think of it that way, it kind of makes sense when somebody gets stuck with, yeah, I've mastered this one song and I'm good. I'm just going to stick with this. I'm not going to try anything else because that worked. That got a lot of applause. Last time I did it, I don't need to try something new because it may go wrong and it may not be what I want it to be. So when you think of the brain as kind of rewarding us for almost being stuck with what we know how to do. It makes sense that, oh OK, when we're pushing students to do something different, when we're asking them to step outside of what's familiar and what's known, what kept them alive or what I'll say to kids, I was like, you know what no one laughed at yesterday with what you did, because you know how to do that really well and it's scary to think about doing something different, because what if they laugh? Cause for you, that's kind of that. You know what if I die? Well, in teen worlds, being laughed at sometimes can feel almost the same way. 

So that's what I usually see is what's going on is when we've kind of gone through all these different things and they're really educated and they have all the pieces intellectually, but emotionally they still have something that's keeping them from progressing or trying something new or really just giving it their all. I usually find that there's some fear and anxiety under there that we kind of need to dive into and start talking about and very concrete. 

Eric: 

This information is, it's gold. I'm just going to say that it is gold for educators, for parents especially. Because what happens when your kid comes home and they just got finished with either a concert or a practice or anything else and they don't want to say a word?  And I feel like there's a lot of insight that your book offers for parents and educators as well. So thank you so much for writing this. I can't wait to check out in more depth for myself. Is there anything else you want to close our conversation with today? 

Alaina: 

No, I just want to thank you so much for having me. This is really my favorite thing to talk about. I love doing this. I love talking to students. I love talking to educators. I love talking to teens and tweens and their parents because I am just such a firm believer that the creative arts are just so fundamental and so important, and really, especially in today's world, can build bridges where nothing else can. Like when we have nothing else in common, sometimes we can be like, oh, but you like that movie too? I liked that movie. Did you like the soundtrack? I love the soundtrack. 

So I just think it is so important to support young artists to make sure it's something that's valued and respected and that students feel that they're really supported entirely around that pursuit and understood about loving it even when it might create some conflict for them. So just thank you so much for the work that you're doing and that you're really trying to help educators out there and I think this is just phenomenal and I've really enjoyed this conversation. 

Eric:

Well, same here. I've really enjoyed it as well. Now where can we find your book to purchase it? 

Alaina: 

The book is very easy to purchase if you're like me and Amazon is your friend. You can find it on Amazon, you can find it on Barnes and Nobles, and you actually can find it at most retailers online. So if you just look under parenting talent. Then it comes up immediately. If people want a quick link, there is a link on my website which is www.parentingtalent.com. 

Eric: 

Wonderful. And thank you again, Doctor Alaina, for this wonderful insight about the inner workings of young artists. You can find out more and contact info on her website, parentingtalent.com. You can purchase her book on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, other great places where books are sold, and I look forward to reaching out to you again and poking around and see what comes next for just in this whole journey that you're doing too. Because I'm sure there's gonna be another book or some more information out here that we can get, you know, from our parents and our educators as well. 

Alaina: 

Absolutely. And also I periodically do workshops, so if anybody is interested in getting more information, again all that information will be on my website and I'd really enjoy working with some more parents and educators. 

Eric: 

Thank you again to Doctor Alaina Johnson for joining us on this episode. Check out her book, Parenting Talent, on Amazon Kindle or most online bookstores. You can find more information at her website, parentingtalent.com. You can also find a link to her socials. And her website at our website faecc.org. Until next time, I wish you peace and blessings.