Should I force my son to take singing lessons?
Third edit: I apologized to my kid last night for trying to force him to take singing lessons. He seemed very nonchalant about it, but then was in extra lifted spirits all night. I think he always loves it when I apologize to him for things I did wrong in this parenting journey. I appreciate everyone's resounding no answers! Thanks for all the feedback!
Second edit: For everyone thinking this is about my ambitions, it's not really. Of course I have ambitions for him to have an enjoyable and engaging life, but I don't have a specific image of that. He himself has expressed lots of interest in making music, singing covers of songs, etc. He is the one who has musical ambitions.
First edit: "Thank you for everyone's comments! I was definitely leaning toward not forcing it, but then I also didn't know if that would be a disservice. I wouldn't really say I have "ambitions" for him to be a singer. It's that he has expressed his ambitions to me and I thought it would a good thing for me to provide him more education on something he is interested in.
I'll definitely drop it and won't force him to take singing lessons!
Glad I posted here. This community is great and has been very, very helpful for me!"
Original post: I'm struggling with my decision making regarding singing lessons for my 12 year old. He is in his school choir and enjoys singing and music. He is an okay to good singer, he's not great or amazing. I think he has a slight natural talent for it and with some training I can see singing/music being a great extracurricular activity for him throughout his life. His whole paternal family is naturally musically gifted, but unfortunately that natural gift kind of passed over my son.
When I told him that I'd like to get him singing lessons his reaction was "I'm a great singer, I don't need lessons." I told him that good singers become great singers with lots of training and I explained how his favorite artist makes such good music because he went to college to study music. During a later conversation, I also told him that it is a bit of a toxic/narcissistic view to think you are so good at something that you can't get better without some training.
We have had two singing lessons with a bit of an eccentric/odd guy, but he's affordable and close to our neighborhood. My son is even more adamant now that he doesn't want singing lessons and when we talked about it last night he blamed it on the instructor being a bit odd. I reminded him that he was opposed to singing lessons before he even met this guy, so just saying it is because of his eccentric personality seems like a lie.
Should I just drop it and not force him to take singing lessons or should I sort of force him to persevere through the awkwardness to reap the potential great benefits of some voice training?
BTW, my son has ADHD, and is in taekwondo and loves it, so we have do have a structured extracurricular activity that he is dedicated to.