Kids of America, beware! The New York Times has just given your parents the okay to ruin your lives. Op-ed writer/sadist David Brooks, summarizing recent research into the genesis of genius, dismisses Mozart’s innate talent and credits his dad, Mr. Mozart Sr., for whipping the lame young composer into a superhuman:

What Mozart had, we now believe, was the same thing Tiger Woods had — the ability to focus for long periods of time and a father intent on improving his skills. Mozart played a lot of piano at a very young age, so he got his 10,000 hours of practice in early and then he built from there….The key factor separating geniuses from the merely accomplished is not a divine spark. It’s not I.Q….Instead, it’s deliberate practice.

WOLFGANG: No-talent schmuck.

Terrific. This is, essentially, a reckless call for child abuse. Can’t you just see parents reading this and thinking, “Hmm…so simple. Deliberate practice,” and then putting their spark-less children on a grueling arpeggio schedule?

Brooks goes on to paint a scenario in which a young girl with a “slightly above average verbal ability” is driven to practice writing just a bit harder by a serendipitous death in the family.

It would also help if one of her parents died when she was 12, infusing her with a profound sense of insecurity and fueling a desperate need for success.

Great. So now those same plotting parents have to lie in bed and figure out which of them should selflessly expire:

Wife: “Honey, you do it…you’re so much better at doing things like putting up Ikea shelves and dying than I am. And, according to that nice David Brooks in The New York Times, Bethany really needs this extra push to reach the Mozart standard.”

Husband: “But, dear, Bethany depends on you so much more. If our goal is to infuse her with insecurity, you should really be the one to bite it.”

Wife: “But you bleed so well.”

Husband: “But you will look so pretty in your coffin.”

Wife: “I always have to do everything around here!”

Well played, Mr. Brooks.

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