Are We Pressuring Him?!

Our oldest son, Zayden, recently told us he wants to be on Broadway. It was pretty random considering he has never seen a Broadway play, but we decided to listen to him on this. As we were listening to all of his reasons why he wants to do this, he mentioned a show that our family had been watching for months on repeat- Glee. I asked how Glee affected his decision and he mentioned how all the characters represented someone. Because I'm a mom, I asked which one reminded him of himself, Jason and I were a little shocked when he said "Kurt". For those who live under a rock and have never seen Glee, Kurt is a gay character, who honestly is the most adorable human on the planet. Anyway, back to the point when he said that we wanted to know why and he rolled his eyes as if we should know already. Then he told something that not only shocked us, but kind of broke our hearts. "Because, Kurt just wanted to sing and not play sports but his dad thought he should play sports. You guys always say how important sports are but what about art?!" It was like a punch in the gut to know that despite how hard we tried to be good, well rounded parents we were failing. We were making our son feel like his dreams weren't worth something. I never realized that we were putting so much pressure on our kids to play sports, we always let them choose so we thought they enjoyed it. After a long apology, we decided singing lessons could replace his sport that he apparently hated anyway. We promised that after this moment he would no longer be forced to play sports, but we'd appreciate if he at least pretended to enjoy his siblings sporting events and in turn they would be forced to enjoy all his future events. I hope he follows his dreams and is never afraid of telling us what he wants to do with his life again.