An eight-year-old playing fiddle? What age did she start? Three or four, maybe.

Setting aside the question of talent vs cuteness, today's kid is the pushed kid. (I'm speaking of middle class America here, and that's a lot of kids.) The parents are so busy with high-pressure jobs, the perfect house, two big cars and the cell phones that their kids need to seem extraordinary to get noticed.

Also, they are supposed to demonstrate from a very early age that they to are smart and gifted enough to fit in this milieu.

I feel sorry for them.