A musical instrument is a friend for life
Why...
Do parents inflict on their children the misery of learning an instrument?
Well of course the answer to the above is probably one upmanship and ignorance.
“My Johnnie is learning the recorder…”
“Ah yes, the sweet little simpleton’s flute. Miranda found that soooooo easy she is now playing the oboe…”
All this lasts as long as the parent can stand the noise. No sane person would ever inflict on themselves, a child practicing the violin. Strangling a cat produces melodic bliss in comparison.
Then of course you get trendy parents who allow kids something a bit more useful and contemporary like drums or electric guitar. That is just masochistic. An electric guitar wails, and it’s the listener who ‘gently weeps’.
Drum solos are like nails down a blackboard even at a rock concert, but performed for hours on end, it is likely to end in mass murder. In addition, unlike a pair of maracas which your child can carry anywhere, you need a lorry to lug a drum kit about and a fork lift truck to load the stuff into the lorry. And then what? If your beloved keeps it up, he or she will spend all their teenage years doing no work but instead auditioning for bands convinced they are the next Nirvana.