Ponies, sails, pianos
Every child needs one thing they are properly good at. Ponies, boats and pianos are expensive ways to find it, and they work.
The short version
Riding, sailing, skiing, golf, tennis, music: the classic passions of privileged childhoods share three virtues. They take years, they cannot be bought outright and they put the child in a room where nobody cares who their parents are. This section is about starting them well.
In this section
Sports & Passions · 8 min read
A pony is the classic passion of a privileged childhood because it teaches things nothing else does: care, fear, patience and the fact that a large animal is indifferent to your surname. It also costs 2,000 euros a month. Here is how families do it well.
Sports & Passions · 7 min read
The family with a yacht often has children who cannot sail, because a yacht with a crew teaches nothing. A dinghy on a lake teaches everything: wind, water, capsizing and the fact that the boat does not care who owns the big one.
Sports & Passions · 7 min read
Most children who start an instrument stop within three years, and most of those had a grand piano at home. The ones who play at forty had a teacher they loved, a parent who sat with them and fifteen minutes a day, not an hour on Sunday.
After a year of lessons, at seven or eight, and only if someone else does the mucking out on school days. A good first pony costs 5,000 to 25,000 euros; livery, farrier, vet and insurance add 800 to 2,000 euros a month.
Piano at five or six, because it teaches reading music and harmony at once, or violin if the child asks for it. Wind and brass from eight, when the lungs and the teeth are ready. Whatever it is, the teacher matters more than the instrument.
More hours a week than the child's age is the paediatric rule of thumb. A ten-year-old should not train more than ten hours a week in one sport, and every child needs one full day off and one different activity.
