Cat’s in the Cradle – Suzuki Association of the Americas

“When you comin’ home, dad?
I don’t know when. But we’ll get together then.
You know we’ll have a good time then.”
– Harry Chapin

There are moments in everyone’s life that you just
want to forget. Some are monumental, yet most are
just slightly embarrassing moments that you wish
you could somehow take back. One of the latter moments
happened to me years ago when I bought my first iPhone
and after a few months figured out how to download
songs from iTunes to it. One evening soon thereafter, I
sat in a booth at an Italian restaurant with my wife, Lynn,
waiting for our meals to come. Excited to play around with
my phone, I had gone into iTunes to see what songs I had
downloaded and then compare them with Lynn’s songs. I
still don’t know what happened, but I must have touched the
title to “Cat’s in the Cradle”—and the song started blaring
out of my iPhone. It was so loud! I didn’t know the volume
on a phone could go that high. I actually didn’t even know
where the volume control on the phone was. People at the
other tables all started staring at me as I fidgeted with the
phone trying to either reduce the volume or stop the song
from playing. I felt like it went on for an eternity, although
it was probably just about 15 seconds before I was able to
corral the noise. Fortunately, people are nice, and nobody
from the restaurant said anything to me afterwards. But I
was a bit shaken.
“Cat’s in the Cradle” was a popular song when I was growing up. Besides it being a very pleasing melodic tune, the
lyrics portray how we tend to get so tied up in a busy life
that we sometimes neglect to spend adequate time with
those we love. A father misses seeing his boy learning to
walk because he is always out of town. The boy, now older,
wants to play ball with his father, and the father just needs to
get the bills paid instead of taking out the time to play catch
with his son. The son understands his dad is a busy man
and nonetheless idolizes his father, saying, “I’m gonna be
like you dad. You know I’m gonna be like you.” As the lyrics
progress, it turns out that the father retires and now feels

he finally has the time to see his son,
but his son now has a family himself
of his own, and thus it is the son who
doesn’t have much time to spend with
his dad. The father finally realizes that
his young son’s words were prophetic;
he did turn out to be just like his dad.
Life is about balance, and there is
nothing more important than participating in the joy of raising our
children. When we retire, nobody
regrets not spending enough hours
at the office. The only regrets come
from wishing we had spent more
family time together. As teachers we
also need to strike a balance with the
way we teach our students. It’s true
that different teachers have different
modalities in which they teach. Some
teachers are motherly and really
share in so many aspects of each of
their student’s lives. Others are more
focused on bringing about excellence
and keep other social sharing to a
minimum. Just like the colors in the
rainbow, there is no right and wrong,
only shades of difference. And it’s all
good. Ideally, it’s up to each teacher to
see what each individual student needs
and cater their teaching personalities
to best serve that student. Then as the
student grows up, we need to change
with them and adapt our teaching
personalities for our student’s next leg
of their musical journey.
I remember many years ago reading
an article in the magazine Psychology
Today that studied teachers of people
who far excelled beyond all others in
their field. One thing they found was
that to be a master of any discipline,
you almost always needed to start
some training before age 13. Another
thing they found was that children
who eventually became masters in
their field followed a predictable path
in their training:

In the first stages of learning
they had a teacher who was
motherly, accepting, and allpraising. Their first teachers
were the ones who instilled
the love of what they were
doing and made them want to
continue the pursuit of their
chosen discipline.
Nex t, their teacher either
changed their focus to foster
developing technique, or the
students sometimes went on
to another teacher who focused
on developing the basics, not
letting things slide, and giving
the child the tools with which
to grow while keeping their
love of what they were doing
intact. The child started to really improve quickly and loved
what they were doing even
more after they were given
rigid rules to memorize and
benefit their development.
Finally, their teacher started to
focus on installing artistry, or
again, the child might move on
to a teacher who specialized in
taking students who loved what
they were doing, had taken the
time with their teachers to build
a formidable technique, and
were now ready for learning
what could propel them far
above the norm. They were
ready for the finer points that
wouldn’t have been appropriate, and might have been even
counterproductive, while they
were still learning the basics.
And they learned that the rules
they had so carefully learned
could sometimes be broken
in certain circumstances to
enhance artistry.
It was interesting for me to see that
successful training of children who
eventually became artists followed
a predictable sequence of stages in
their learning. I think all teachers
should keep this in mind to ensure our
students are being served to the best
of their (and our) abilities. Of course,
only a very small percentages of our
students will ever want to become
great artists, and that’s mostly what
the conservatories and wonderful
universities are for anyway.
Still, in the ever-going process of
teaching our students, we must not
forget the message of “Cat’s in the
Cradle.” As the process of learning
is far more important for most students than the terminal playing level
reached when they are no longer with
us, it would behoove us to think like
a child and cater to our inner child.
Taking delight in the small things is a
child-like quality that was very evident
in the teachings of Shinichi Suzuki. He
always took delight in introducing his
newest ways of teaching and on trying
to reach a child on their level instead
of making the child come up to the
teacher’s level. One of Dr. Suzuki’s
quotes comes to mind here:
“I am mentally preparing myself for
the five-year-old mind. I want to come
down to their physical limitations
and come up to their sense of wonder
and awe.”
In the song “Cat’s in the Cradle,”
what is important to the boy is dwarfed
by what was important to the dad.
Wanting to spend time playing ball
with his dad was all the young boy
wanted, but the dad knew in the long
run it was better to pay the bills and
take care of his business. There was a
sad disconnect of values that eventually haunted the dad when his son grew
up and suddenly turned the tables on
him, having no time for his dad. As
teachers this can happen to us too. We
know what is important and what we
are trying to do with a student, but our
young students often do not necessarily share that perspective. We need to
take Dr. Suzuki’s advice and not only
come down to their physical level, not
expecting them to do more than they
are currently capable of doing, but we
need to come up to their sense of awe
with the world. By taking the extra
time to do this, we only become more
effective teachers, and we will enjoy
the process so much better too.
I still remember a student who
studied with a prominent local violin
teacher who had decided to leave that teacher and then seek me out for lessons.
I asked why and they said that
their school orchestra teacher had
wanted them to prepare an excerpt
for their seating audition coming up
in a couple weeks, and their private
teacher did not want to help them
work on that excerpt in their lesson,
instead wanting to concentrate on
their concerto and technical exercises
because those were more important
to the student in the long run. But
that was not more important to the
student in the short run! That’s why
it is so important to see the world in
the eyes of the child—or there may be
no “long run.”
One of the nicest things I heard in
the past year was when I started
teaching the great-granddaughter of
my high school orchestra director.
I experienced a multitude of emotions when I started Claire. One was
pride, the ability to give back to the
family lineage that was instrumental
in starting me out for a career in
music. Another was shock, that I was
actually old enough to be teaching
my teacher’s great-granddaughter!
But the student’s grandmother made
me feel fantastic when after three or
four lessons she told me, “Claire loves
coming to violin lessons because she
said she likes the same things Mr.
Kaminsky likes: cats and violins.”
I do use my three cats in my teaching, but mostly when I know the
students love cats. I may even let
them pet the cat if they can play their
“Climb Kitty” well enough to warrant a reward. With other students
the connection may be giving them
analogies, comparing learning their
techniques to what they must learn
when playing on their hockey team.
Rewarding a student with a candy
from the candy dish for completing
three items cooperatively in their
lessons reaches almost every young
child. To each their own. That is my
task to find out what makes each student tick, and then wind their clocks.
How children view their own lessons
ultimately determines the success of
those lessons.
With the recent onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, our world has been
on edge. With this virus now even
closing all schools, I recently started
teaching our lessons online. Being
confined to our houses all day and
knowing the outside world presents
dangerous challenges is both a scary
proposition and a blessing. I have
seen so many families out in their
backyards sharing family time on a
scale that would not have been possible before the novel coronavirus. As
traumatizing as this situation is, there
is something nostalgic about jettisoning all the outside influences that sap
our time and renewing what is most
important in our lives: our relationships. It could be my imagination, but
it seems like when I log into Zoom and
make connections with my students,
they are truly happy to be having
their lessons, far more so than before
we had to resort to online lessons.
Maybe we are bringing them a sense
of normalcy that grounds them in a
world currently so unpredictable. Or
maybe our children are just actually
happier, having their immediate family always around and not having their
schedules so packed that they have no
time to relax or even assimilate the
things they have recently learned. In
any case, I have taken notice. I think
we all share the feeling like we are all
going to get through this together and
become stronger from it. And when
this crisis is eventually over, the song
“Cats in the Cradle” will no longer be
the only thing reminding us to take the
time to spend with our family while
we still can. The forced pruning of
our schedules due to coronavirus will
have had a direct impact in reminding
us as well.
Two of my students are children of
the St. Louis Symphony second associate concertmaster, so I thought that
with the symphony shut down for the
year maybe their mom, with all that
free time, might just decide to teach
her children herself during the period
we couldn’t have actual in-person lessons. But no, they signed up for Zoom
lessons with me nevertheless, as they
seemed so excited to continue lessons.
On the very first lesson when we
signed on, I expected to see Charlotte
and her violin on the computer screen.

Instead I saw Charlotte and her cat
Pumpkin, with her brother Benjamin
watching over her shoulder. Thinking
this was a “Cat’s in the Cradle” moment
not to be missed, I told them to wait
a minute, and I would be right back.
Quickly I scurried upstairs to fetch
the closest cat I could find and brought
down my black feline Sacha. So, the
beginning of our online violin lesson
was Pumpkin and Sacha watching
each other on Zoom video. While not
traditional Suzuki teaching by any
sense, the value of capitalizing on the
awe of children in showing off their
cat was priceless. I did not want to be
Harry Chapin’s “dad” that was too busy
to play ball with his son! Charlotte
and Benjamin’s mother even thought
this was so cool that she took a photo
of the action!
There are moments in everyone’s life
that you just want to remember. Some
are monumental, yet most are just
slightly enjoyable moments that just
put a smile on your face. One of the
latter moments happened to me two
weeks ago when I figured out how to
use Zoom and started my first virtual
lessons. Don’t pass up our opportunities to bond with our students, life is too
precious, and our time teaching them
will be over in the blink of an eye. 7
When you comin’ home, teacher?
I know just when.
And we’ll get together now.
You know we’ll have a good time now!

Joseph Kaminsky has
been teaching violin for
over forty-five years, has
been a registered Suzuki
Teacher Trainer since 1984,
and has taught at over
350 workshops and institutes. Mr. Kaminsky
studied with John Kendall, Roland/Amita Vamos,
and Shinichi Suzuki. He maintains a studio of 55
private violin students ranging in age from age 3
through adult, and in level from beginning adults to
International Competition-winning students. Mr.
Kaminsky is Principal 2nd violinist with the Metropolitan Orchestra of St. Louis. Joseph Kaminsky
was named MoASTA “Artist String Teacher of the
Year” in 2014 and “Private Teacher of the Year” in

He is a regular contributor to the American
Suzuki Journal.
Joseph enjoys living in the city where he was
raised, and spending time with his wife Lynn; his
adult boys Nicholas and Daniel; and his stepdaughter Erin, who is Assist

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