And your example of athletics is no joke: that is exactly the story of my oldest (age 11), for whom his organizing force in life is baseball. While the interest in baseball emphatically did not come from me (or my wife), I have come to appreciate the existential joy of playing catch with him or watching a ballgame with him or hitting pop-flies to him long after the sun is down. Yes, a part of me wishes that he were more interested in some of the things that I liked at his age (and I will continue to hold those doors open for him should his interests shift) -- but it pales in comparison to the bond we have formed over the stuff that really matters to him.

So don't. If you want him to learn violin you too should learn, show him how fun it is so he can learn with you.

If you want you kid to learn soldering. Then have fun soldering for few hours per week and let him be with you when you do that.

You don't have to (shouldn't?) force anything on your child. Children are starving for fun and are willing to try anything they see you have fun with.

I just want to follow up and say that as a parent, you should do your best to involve them in whatever it is that you're doing. If you're cooking, have them help you measure things. If you're playing board games, let them move/place the pieces for you. If it's something that they can't safely be involved with, talk to them about what's going on.

Explain what you're doing along the way.

Involve them, and expose them, to a wide range of activities. Children's minds can handle and process a lot more than most people give them credit for.

If a kid is bored because they're in a class that's too simple and they already know it all, the problem isn't that the kid is "too" far ahead; there's no such thing, as long as the kid is having fun. The problem is that the class isn't useful or interesting, so they shouldn't be in it. That's quite fixable.

I could have gone to a school for the gifted, but I wanted to be with normal people, not the over achievers (friends that went later told me my worries where justified). At some point I just decided to minimize all school effort and did my own thing as good as I could, but hated school since 2nd or 3rd grade.

I dropped from winning some math competition every now and than to the lowest mark that got me through, but I would do it this way again.

I'm happy with whom (not what) I have become, a thing surprisingly few can say.

This is just from my own experience, but my parents had me play for a number of years. I enjoyed it, but being a costly thing to commit to with lessons and private orchestras, it can get pricey. Money wasn't the issue though, but it led me into feeling pressured to constantly practice well beyond what I considered enjoyable (~3 hours a day) and I got burned out on it.

I went through the Suzuki Method[1], which puts a huge emphasis on memorization and that was part of my gripe with it. It just kind of sucked the fun and enjoyment out of playing when the biggest focus as a child is memorizing the same song to the point of hating it. The Suzuki Method has a number of success stories so I don't think it's bad. However, it's likely to be successful over time with a certain type of student. Others end up getting burnt out such as myself.

My friend that was my age that I played violin together with sometimes started a few years before me and burned out a year or so before I did. Similar situation with her time invested and pressure to play.

I still play now as an adult for fun and don't regret playing as a kid, but I would only suggest being cautious about how you approach it if you want it to be more than a recreational hobby.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suzuki_method

A few pages a night, a chapter, whatever. She enjoyed it. Now she is 2 and she reads for fun. She doesn't "read" read, but she can recognize letters, and she knows what letter her name starts with, what letter her cousin's name starts with, and can figure out the first letter of a bunch of words.

But she reads for fun, she will pick up her books and pretend to read them. She grabbed one of our Christmas cards and read it aloud to us. Apparantly this Christmas card said "Merry Christmas to the Princess" but reading is still something that to her is a fun thing, not a chore, and she does get better, she does recognize letters, she does recognize words, and when she does, she gets excited and wants to read more.

I think this is the big thing. I think the thing that school does to learning is terrible by making it a mandatory chore that you are punished (even indirectly) for not succeeding at.

Learning the way that my daughter is means that reading is always fun. If you pick up something and play with it, and then realize you've learned something, it's always fun. You never hate reading because when you don't want to do it, you just don't. Pressuring your kid to do it when they don't want to will teach them to resent the activity itself.

But your son is a month old. You will learn a lot more about him as he gets older. Everyone around me is surrounded by babies right now, I guess that kind of happens when you have a baby, but what I've learned is that every kid is super different, and the parents don't get to choose it, they just get to deal with it. You can't force your kid to be what you want him to be.

What is important I think is that you remove certain barriers, and leave certain barriers in. Leave in all of the barriers that he can learn to climb over. Help remove the imaginary barriers about what he's allowed to do or what is appropriate.

For instance, you might think that certain math or engineering tasks are too much to handle for someone his age, so you keep them away from him. These are the barriers you should remove. Don't force him to do it necessarily, but if he wants to know or wants to do it, unless it's going to hurt him (a 3 year old with a soldering iron might be an iffy prospect), then make sure he knows he has the opportunity to try in a safe space, or at least give him a path to get there. On the other hand, don't do too much for him, don't remove all barriers, if he wants to work with expensive materials, give him a limited amount, or find a way for him to earn it, especially if you can actually get him to earn the money to buy it directly. This teaches him to overcome those barriers.

But he's one month old, you're on a high, you're thinking about everything. Things will get harder, that high will fade, and you'll start wanting to take back your life. Keep him in your mind then, think about what he's feeling, and what he likes, and how you can encourage him. He's a person, not a project or a trophy.