Do kids know how to work hard anymore? The age of entitlement.

I have been a piano and voice teacher for over 26 years now and I have learned a few important life truths from this wonderful career I love.

No matter how great a lesson goes, if the student doesn’t go home and practice nothing is going to happen.

Actually this applies to almost anything we want to do in life. If we wait around and pray for things to happen to us, or pray to get better at something without giving any effort to it, God isn’t going to miraculously turn us in to something we are not willing to struggle and fight for.

As it turns out the Savior says to us “Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you.” We have to be willing to knock, and oftentimes force ourselves out of our comfort zones to become something more.

Those who excel in music I find also excel in life. I have had several very talented students who have gone on to be lawyers, doctors and brilliant musicians and in each case I can attribute it to their ability to work hard. They aren’t lazy or entitled, they were willing to put in the time.

These days of instant gratification in our youth is creating a huge problem. No-one is willing to work hard. They want things to come easy and fast. I have seen over the last two decades that kids are more and more prone to quitting than ever before. They aren’t willing to stick with hard musical study. Music is another language and as such takes time, effort and even frustrating failure from time to time.

With this instant gratification life we have now find ourselves raising our children in we need to be that much more willing to do the hard things. We can’t be their friends yet, we have to be the parents. We need to push them to excel, push them to become more than the netflix and memes they watch. They will resist us and they may even resent our pushing for a time, but I am absolutely positive that they will thank us later.

Let’s rise up and teach our kids from an early age how to work hard, endure to the end and be willing to fight for who they want to become. It is these very children that will one day run our nation and determine what our future going to look like.