[Muta]

My parents made me play music through my entire childhood.

While I hated it at the time, I look back on it now and realize just what a world of good it did for me. It taught me how to think open-mindedly, creatively, and it taught me how to analyze and interpret foreign information. These were phenomenal skills to develop; unbeknownst to me at the time.

I'm no scientist or anything, but I'm willing to bet that those skills helped me do as well as I did in elementary, high school and university, and have helped millions of others who took similar musical routes.

Granted, my parents also gave me the freedom to have a social life. They made me play music and study hard, but they also gave me no curfew and pretty much encouraged independence right from when I was about 10 years old. They told me to go out and experiment things, but learn from it to make smarter decisions in the future. When I look back on it, it was quite a brilliant parenting strategy, and one that I will likely practice with my kids in the future (if I ever have them, I like being a bachelor waaaay too much).

As a result, I'm doing just fine post-university, and I do believe I have the communication and leadership skills to go pretty far (perhaps you can see I have inflated confidence, but really, that's a compliment to me, so I don't really care). I know other bookworms who got better grades than me in high school and university, but they can't be put in social situations and help a company through business development because they simply do not have those social skills. I've seen it, even in the working world.

While I don't agree with all the all the tactics the author recommends, I do agree with the music part. I'm sure there's many examples of people who benefit their entire life from learning music at an early age.

Kids, however, need to have proper social skills. There's more to life than just 'family reputation'... something that too many families focus on by making their kids cerebral cyborgs. One thing I did was go experience new places and cultures around the world after university, and it gave me an even better perspective on life than what I gained acedmically before I left. I got into some weird and tricky situations when I travelled, and met some characters I hope to never meet again... but those experiences, whether good or bad, are invaluable to furthering your respect and appreciation for others and others' cultures.