Self-Doubt

One of my students has been working on the same piece for awhile.   He has ADHD and it can take of bit of time for things to all click together in the way they need to when playing the cello.  Hooked bows, shifts, intonation, hand positions, etc.  He's also one of the sweetest kids I've ever worked with.  His mother has talked to me a lot about his frustrations with practice during the week and we've come up with strategies to help.  But in our last lesson she brought up that he had been feeling some self-doubt.  That's a little more than I had heard in the past, and so I just had to sit with it for a moment when she said it.  How does one respond to a 10-year-old feeling self-doubt?  The irony is that I had been feeling the same way recently.  To respond to him was, in a way, to respond to myself.  If I could tell him off-handedly not to worry about it, I should be able to believe it for myself.  It's so easy to say, Oh you're fine!  But what if it isn't.  So I had to pause.

I wasn't ready to give a full answer.  I'm still not brave enough.  In the end I spoke about what a gift he has that he shares with others through his music, how much inspiration others take from him.  This is completely true.  There is something special about his playing.  And he has no choice but to serve that.  That was all I could give him in that moment.

But for myself, when faced with this sort of issue, I have to dig deeper to actually resolve it to any satisfaction and that's where I don't know how to help him or others.  I feel inadequate in other ways in my teaching, but I wish for more courage to walk with someone in their self-doubt, in their confusion, in their frustration.

I'm approaching the other side of the hill in terms of how many students I have.  Just a little earlier, it was too many, but now that I have a few more, I'm failing to resist it so much and just going with the flow.  Perhaps I'll find a respite in the waves and discover what it is I'm hoping to convey for myself and them.