Everyones competitive. The first step is to admit it

Everyones competitive. The first step is to admit it My sons cello teacher is dying. This is the third time shes had cancer, so this week is my sons last lesson with her. He has grown to love her. He cried during a lesson a few weeks ago and she said, Its okay. Everyone dies. Now lets work on  Saint-Saens. You need it for the master class. So my son cries now only at home.  And we talk about how so many people are sad that shes dying and what if everyone wanted to cry and tell her how much they will miss her during their lessons? Shed be listening to people cry all day long, but she just wants to keep teaching. Before you become thrilled with my newfound empathy, let me admit that while she is trying to stop his crying, I am worrying  about what will happen to my son when he does not have a cello teacher. A therapist once told me  that therapy is successful  when you internalize the therapists voice and just do the whole therapy session in your head without going to therapy. So, for example, I want to tell my husband he is a moron for saying he has done the dishes even when he has not washed pots or pans or glassesonly the plates. Then I hear the therapist say, What do you want to accomplish by telling him hes a moron? And Ill say, I want to make him feel as bad as I feel. Will that make you feel better? No. Itll just make him feel bad. Would you like him to do the pots and pans and glasses when he does the dishes? I can do that conversation in my head to stop myself from throwing a glass at him. So I do the same thing here:   I want to tell you that my son had the very best cello teacher for young kids. And you will say, Oh, Im sure there are other good ones. Then I will get frustrated that you are arguing with me about cello teachers. Of course I know more than you because I spend my life steeped in statistics and qualitative analysis about ten-year-olds learning Tarantella. You will ask why I think I have to control everything. I will say I want the best for him. You will say the best would be me not being so uptight. So the teacher told us to go to a cello teacher at a university for the summer who is great at getting kids into Julliard. And look, Im taking a risk here, telling you what I worry about, okay? So dont jump all over me. Getting into Juilliard is not something I worry about. All the kids  in my sons program  got in this year who wanted to get in. What I worry about is if my son is going to be a soloist, he has to be so great that he wont even need to go to Juilliard. He has to have won international contests or something by that age. Its embarrassing to admit I think like that. Why am I so wrapped up in his life? Ive become insanely competitive and strategic and Im second-guessing everything. So we go to this new teacher, and the teacher says he is not going to do competitions with my son. Which makes no sense to me because my son  loves the pressure. He loves performing. He loves winning. But the teacher says cello is not about winning. Cello is about making beautiful music, he says. I say nothing. He says, Preparing for competitions is like teaching to the test. Do you know what I mean by that? Oh my god. Does he know I write  a whole blog on this topic where I scream at  parents about how teaching to the test  is stupid because its not how the real world works? I want to tell him cello  is different. You have to win competitions in order to win soloist invitations. And my son wants the terrible life of a soloist: always competing, always traveling, living in a series of hotels, eating canapés at meet-and-greets. Another person tells me, Thats such a terrible life. Its not even about the music anymore. Its about performing. But thats what my son wants. To perform. If he didnt have cello hed do something else that was still performing. I can hear the therapist telling me to let my kid live his life. Ive coached a lot of youa  gajillion of youand the root of every coaching session is feeling some sort of competition. Looking at what someone else got for themselves and wanting it. Thinking you should be doing something that you are not doing. Feeling like you are not doing enough. Wanting to do what you have not done. Yet. I have never coached someone who is non-competitive and I dont believe that person exists. Even a yoga teachershe wants to give speeches because influencing one class at a time isnt big enough for her. Or the coach who wants to tell people not to give up because hes scared he gave up already and he wants to feel important. The woman who is just with the kids when everyone around her seems to have a part-time job, and the twenty-three year old who is hotter than everyone else, or the twenty-five-year-old making more money than everyone else. We compete over what we value. And everyone values something. Which brings me to myself and cello. I want to be a parent who navigates the cello world impeccably. But at the top of the cello world is a small group of parents (mothers) who are untouchable when it comes to getting their kids what they need. These moms make the Tiger Mom look like a bunny. And I dont know if I can keep up. Which is how I know that no matter how much you pull out of the rat race, no matter how much you lean out or lean in you cant get away from that feeling like you wish you had more. I think its only natural. And the people who say they dont feel it are the people who are most out of touch with what they value. If I were dying, I think I would keep going just like the cello teacher keeps going. Cello teachers compete by getting students to play the best they can. I would compete by steering my kids as carefully as possible so that when I am gone, they are on track to get what they want. Because thats what I want. And thats what the teacher did when she sent us to the next teacher. She sent us in the right direction. But Im not sure the teacher is right for my son. And I think the truth is that I  cant compete through someone elses life. Thats what you would tell me if  you were my therapist. Youd say I cant control my sons life and theres not really much I can  do that will determine whether he goes on to have a career as a soloist. We can only control what happens in our own life. I am focusing so much energy on the world of competitive musicians. But I cant compete there. I am in the world of mothers. Thats where I have to compete. And competitive mothering is so humiliating because mothering should not be about competing.