How Sharing My Interest in the Arts Helped Me Become a Better Parent

Though nothing has been disastrous (yet), I have managed to mess up many aspects of parenthood. A good example: Easter. Somewhere along the way, I began referring to the Easter Bunny as Peter—he bizarrely morphed with Peter Rabbit for a reason I can’t remember. To avoid a Sunday morning food-coloring feast because of my own aversion to chemicals in food dye, Peter would steal the Easter eggs from our house rather than leave them out to be found and consumed. 

Perhaps even more reflective of my failures is the fact that this alternate history about the Easter Bunny came about at all, since my family has been Jewish as far back as anyone can remember. Spoiler alert: Jews don’t celebrate Easter.

But I have done a lot of things right, too. I’ve demystified swearing and curse words, taught my daughter that avant-garde jazz isn’t always as terrible as people say it is, and, perhaps most importantly, I’ve helped instill in her a love for the performing arts. 

From practically the moment she was born, I’ve been bringing my daughter to events, both at Symphony Space and all around the city. I’ve made efforts to make the arts a regular part of her life, and not just a once-a-year visit to the Radio City Music Hall Christmas Spectacular with the Rockettes (thereby avoiding Christmas-specific events and balancing out the whole Jewish/Easter thing, I suppose). 

I’ve taken her to music concerts that spanned genres, from rock to jazz to classical and just about everything in between. We’ve attended a ton of dance performances, seeing everything from tap to ballet to percussive dance. And we’ve been to more theatrical events than I can count.

The results have made a huge impact on her life. We’ve had discussions about what it takes to write songs and compose music, and where the different styles of music originated. I’ve watched her choreograph dances for stuffed animals and our cat after viewing dance performances (great stuff, despite the erratic performances by the lazy stuffed bears and the overly entitled cat, who studied briefly with Balanchine—as if we needed to hear that story again for the billionth time!).