Aptitudes In Children - Nature Interacting With Nurture

This is honestly one of my favorite subjects because it is so interesting.

As a Catholic Christian, I believe that figuring out what our talents are and how God wants to use them is a key factor in living a fulfilling life of purpose and understanding who we are at our core and who God created us to be. I’ve said it once and I’ll say it a thousand times, life is only satisfying when we are using our gifts and talents for God’s glory, when our life has purpose, and when our life is about building up others.

Jesus touched on this in Matthew 25:14–30 with the parable of the talents. If you haven’t read that or aren’t familiar with it, please go read that now. Essentially Jesus is saying that God has given all of us talents. To some he has given a lot, and to others only a little. But don’t compare your talent to anyone else’s, just use the talents you have. Of course in Jesus’ time a talent was a form of currency, but I think the underlying message is the same. Use what you have for God’s glory. 

What Are Aptitudes? Where do they come from?

So what is an aptitude? According to Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary (2003), aptitude can be defined as (1) an inclination, tendency, or a natural ability; (2) a capacity for learning; and (3) general suitability. The most common definition of aptitude involves an innate ability to perform an activity or task.

Another definition is: Aptitude is inborn potential to do certain kinds of work whether developed or undeveloped.

So essentially aptitude is a more accurate word for talent. In my opinion the word talent gets overused, and used incorrectly, all the time. When someone is amazing at a sport or musical instrument or giving a speech, people often say, “he was born with it. That’s just raw talent. She’s so talented.” And though they are not wrong necessarily, they are missing a huge part of the story. They are missing the development part.

I hear it a lot when I perform. People often tell me “You’re so talented. You have a gift. It’s God given.” And they are not completely wrong. I have been given gifts from God and I am so, so, so grateful for my talents. I hope they bring God glory. But these kind of comments are missing the whole picture. They are not taking into account the close to 10,000 hours that I put in to developing the talent. Sometimes I get the sense that people think I didn’t have to work for it. And I did. That’s why I don’t like the word talent. I prefer the word aptitude, because aptitude implies a natural inclination towards something, but also its potential for development and improvement. 

Nobody is born able to play Clair De Lune on piano. Nobody is born able to write a best-selling novel. Nobody is born able to give a speech in front of thousands of people. People who do these things have developed their aptitudes. I guarantee you that any successful person you see who is outstanding in their field has worked hard to get there.

I see this a lot with people who want to learn how to sing, or around the subject of singing. As a vocal teacher I can tell you that ANYONE can learn how to sing. People assume that Mariah Carey and Celine Dion were born able to sing like that, and since when they try to sing they don’t sound like that, they will never be able to sing. WRONG. They had to train and develop their aptitude. Every singer you hear on the radio has had some form of vocal training. Think about it, there is nothing inherently different about Mariah Carey’s vocal cords and throat than yours. You may not have as much aptitude to hear the notes or create melodies as her, but you CAN learn how to position your throat and vocal cords and lungs and stomach to sing a beautiful note. So if you like singing, but you don’t think you have a good voice, give me a call. I can help you sound better hahaha. Nothing like some shameless promotion for my business in there. 

Anyway, that’s not really what I wanted to talk about. That’s just a side topic. Back to your regular scheduled broadcast. 

Aptitudes in children are directly correlated to what those children grow up to do with their lives as adults. So understanding what a child’s aptitudes are and developing them is so important in building the self-confidence and self-esteem they need to be a successful adult. So this is VITALLY important.

I was first introduced to the idea of aptitudes in college. It was the first day of classes at good ol’ Cal State Long Beach. I was in my third year there so most of my classes were in the business building that year. It was the first time my classes weren’t all over campus (which is a square mile) so I was grateful. I honestly don’t even remember what class it was, but I’ll never forget that first day. The elderly female professor was going on and on and on about aptitudes and aptitude testing and blah blah blah. I remember thinking to myself, what the hell is all this about? Isn’t this supposed to be a business class? Then she had every student go around and say what they were into, what they did or what their favorite subject was. It came to me. 

I said “I’m a musician." 

She said, “Interesting.. Are you good at math?” I was a little taken aback but not surprised. A lot of people associate being good at music with being good at math. As it turns out I am very good at math (at least I was when I was doing it every day in school). I was in year 2 of Calculus in my senior year of high school, so I didn’t have to take any math classes in college. Nowadays I haven’t done math in close to 10 years so when there’s a math problem in an escape room I fail to remember PEMDAS, but that’s another story. 

“Yeah I am.” I replied. 

“I bet you’re good at languages too.” BAM!

Suspiciously I replied… “yes… I am.” I was really good at languages in high school too. 

“Ah yes. It’s the same part of the brain. It’s about understanding how systems work. There are systems at work in math, language and music.” 

This. Blew. My. Mind. I never realized there was a correlation between the things I was good at and the part of the brain those things happen in. It never occurred to me that there’s a distinct reason why I was good at music and math and languages. I had no idea they were connected. Suddenly this class went from incredibly boring and pointless to very important in understanding who I was and what I was meant to do. 

I find the reasons why a person may have aptitudes towards certain things and not others very interesting to ponder. Obviously it’s related to the brain and its development. There must also be some kind of genetic reason as well. But I wonder if factors like food the mother consumes while pregnant, feelings the mother has while pregnant and activities the mother partakes in while pregnant play a role and what specific role they play. This fascinates me. Not that I would ever want to manipulate that to create a baby with the aptitudes I wanted, though I’m sure they would do that in China. I just find it interesting and would like to understand how it works. Maybe one day in heaven God will fill me in.

How We Land In Certain Places… The Nurture Part.

I have spent a lot of time thinking about this since then. How did I end up in music? Why did I take that path instead of math or language. This is where the nurture part comes in. Nurture and nature interact with each other and I believe it is understanding the relationship between the two that can greatly help you understand what your calling in life is, and what isn’t. 

Children growing up are like little emotional sponges. They are in constant need of validation and approval in order to feel loved. It has been said that children need the 5 A’s to grow into healthy adults. Attention, Affection, Approval, Acceptance and Allowance. If children don’t get enough of these things, they develop unhealthy thinking patterns and coping behaviors. It’s no mystery that the people who end up in jail or rehab are people who had a terrible childhood. The Jesuits have been saying for hundreds of years “Show me a child before the age of 7 and I’ll show you the man.” We tend to carry childhood experiences with us into adulthood because those childhood experiences shape the way we think about the world and ourselves and our relationship to it. 

So it’s the things that children get attention and approval for that they end up enjoying the most, and doing the most. And children usually get attention and approval for things they do well, and not so much for things they don’t do so well. I see it all the time. Kids come in to learn piano or guitar and they have a great aptitude for it. I shower them with approval and build them up with things like “Hey! You have a knack for this. You are getting this!” and they light up and suddenly become super interested in music. Other kids, they don’t have much of an aptitude for it. And so naturally they don’t receive the same amount of positive attention. I would never discourage a kid or give them negative attention, but naturally, even if I’m being as positive and encouraging as possible, I’m not going to tell a student they’re amazing at something when they’re not. And after a while they lose interest. Sometimes I’ll even have a conversation with the parent and just let them know their child is really just not getting it and they may be better suited for something else. 

Let me use myself as an example to further illustrate this and even go a little deeper.

The part of the brain that developed further than other parts when I was in my mothers womb was the part related to understanding and recognizing systems. So, I have a natural aptitude towards things like music, math, languages, puzzles, even teaching, etc. Growing up, I was always good at math. I will never forget that when I was 8 or 9 years old, my mother had to run some errands and while her car was getting washed, she taught me basic algebra. I took to it quickly and she was very enthusiastic about it. She gave me a lot of approval and attention for it. This made me feel good about myself. And so, from that point on, I had a belief that I was good at math, so in school from that point forward, I excelled in math. And that belief blossomed into a confidence that I was good at math. 

As I grew up, though, there wasn’t much more approval and attention given to me in regards to math. I’m not saying that’s bad or anything. That’s just the way it happened. So despite having the aptitude and excelling in math in school, there was no real emotional attachment to it. There was not a whole lot of psychological and emotional reward for it. So it wasn’t the most important thing to me. I still felt good about myself when I did well, and I did receive positive attention for it from teachers, so it was there, it just wasn’t the forefront. 

Language was never a thing. I wasn’t exposed to learning languages until I was in high school, so it was never really developed. And growing up there was never any focus or attention on the subject of languages by my parents. So though I had an aptitude for it, I never knew it. Sometimes we fall into certain paths in life simply by mere circumstance. If I had had some other kind of experience as a kid where I was exposed to languages before I discovered music, for all I know I could be linguist today. But that’s not how it happened.

Music, however, was a different story. My older brother was a musician. He recorded records and played at coffee houses and sang in choir. As a child I remember going to his concerts and listening to his CDs and seeing how much attention and approval he was receiving from my mom and dad and friends and girls. I thought he was so cool. I wanted to be like him and I wanted the same attention and approval he was getting. In addition to that, growing up my dad was crazy about music. We were always watching concert DVDs and going to the Doheny Blues Festival every year. My dad used to pick me and friends up from school and he would always say, “Nobody gets in this car without listening to the blues.” So needless to say, in my child’s eyes, my dad valued music, and he greatly valued blues and guitar playing.

I didn’t just take straight to guitar though. My first instrument was piano. Following in my brother’s footsteps I joined choir in middle school. I have no idea how exactly I started playing piano, but I had a natural interest in it and my teacher would let me play piano during lunch time in her room. We had a keyboard in the house and one day I just started playing on it. I would write original music and try to learn songs by ear. I was pretty good at it! My dad gave me a lot of attention and approval for this. This made me feel good. Eventually I got a guitar and started playing that. The rest is history.

I think the reason music stuck with me was because there was a much deeper emotional attachment to it. Because of growing up seeing my brother and seeing how my dad valued music, I felt that that was an important thing to do. None of my other aptitudes carried that kind of emotional strength.

I love that episode of the office where Michael has to do like 6 hours of therapy with Toby and towards the end of it we find out that Michael’s step dad really valued the manager of the baseball team and that’s why he became a manager. As funny and as dumb as that is, I think a lot of us fall into our path in life based on these kinds of things.

So perhaps you have an aptitude in something that you never knew you had because it wasn’t valued by your parents or you were never exposed to it. You never received attention and approval for it. Maybe you are good at word stuff, and you got really into creative writing, but if you had never been exposed to creative writing you would have discovered a field where you study how animals respond to verbal cues. Maybe you would find a lot of joy in that thing. Maybe a career in that would be more fulfilling than creative writing. I don’t know. I think people who experience burnout in a certain part of their lives and discover a whole new side to themselves and choose to change careers are experiencing a discovery of another aptitude they never knew they had. So maybe this post can help you examine your aptitudes a little better. 

Using Our Talents For God… Not Ourselves.

I want to go a step further. I know that in my life I pursued a career in music as a blues/rock artist because I wanted to receive attention and approval from my dad. I think deep down I didn’t get enough emotional support from him, so I took whatever support I could get, which was found in doing the things that he valued the most. It also felt good getting attention and approval from other people. Eventually this became my master and instead of using my talents and gifts to build others up and give God glory, I was using them to fill a void inside myself. I was living from the outside in instead of the inside out. I was miserable. No amount of attention and approval could fill that void. I would go from one show to the next feeling good for the hour after the show when people were coming up to me and praising me, but then the next day when I was all alone I would feel empty and start planning the next show. Eventually the house of cards came crashing down and I had to reevaluate my life and what I was living for. I eventually decided to give up my desire to be a rock star and pursue teaching and leading worship because they were more other centered. I have never been happier. It feels really good to be using the talents God has given me for others and to build His kingdom. 

So I’m going to ask a tough question. Only the bravest and most honest can answer it head on. Are you using your talents for God’s glory, or are you chasing validation and attention? I see it all the time. Especially in our modern world of social media. Pretty girls get a lot of attention from their looks and so they end up chasing the validation and attention by posting more and more revealing photos. How stressful and soul sucking! I see a lot of musicians chasing some kind of approval and praise, constantly posting insecure videos of themselves singing. Actors. Models. 

It is my humble and general observation that the kind of people who work in the entertainment industry are the most insecure. They are the ones chasing the most attention and validation. But it’s not just the entertainment industry. Maybe you want to be a really successful business owner because your dad was and you feel the only way to earn his love is to do the same. Maybe you want to be a fabulous writer because your mom loves to read and you never felt you could get her attention. We all have some sense of this whether we realize it or not. That’s just fallen human nature. And don’t get me wrong, it is normal to feel good about yourself when you get approval from others. But what the world approves is not the same thing as what God approves. The real question is… what aptitude have you been developing over the course of your life, and what have you REALLY been developing it for? For yourself? Or for God? 

And if your answer to that question is for yourself… first of all join the club… but second of all I want to encourage you. God will not let your experience go to waste. God will not let the development of that aptitude go to waste. Even if you are using it the wrong way right now or for the wrong reasons, God can take what you’ve learned and use it for His glory. God can take what you’ve learned and use it to build others up. The question is whether or not you’re willing to die to self and do it. 

Please leave a comment! I would really appreciate it. There I go, vying for approval again. ;-)