Johnny Tuivasa (left) with son Roger Tuivasa-Sheck at last year's rugby league Dally M Awards in Sydney. Photo / Getty Images
The proud parents of four special Kiwis tell their parenting stories to Emily Winstanley.
When your kids are little, it's whose baby is walking first. Then it's talking, climbing, reciting the alphabet - a series of quiet competitions over which child is doing it first or better. But what about who has the first kids to make a number one album? Or the first offspring to earn a million bucks? Then you have to start asking whether it's nature or nurture. Are exceptionally talented people raised differently to the rest of us or were they simply born that way?
Johnny Tuivasa, father of 5, including Warriors captain Roger Tuivasa-Sheck:
When Roger was around 5 years old, I was still playing footy and coaching him as well. Every time we finished coaching his team around 3 o'clock, we would jump straight in the car and go to my rugby training. I tell you what, he was the only young kid allowed in our training. When we played touch he played touch with us. We did ball drills and stuff like that, I got him involved. The only time he wasn't involved with us was when we went into contact and then he'd become our ball boy. That's how I got him involved.
I was brought up by just my mother. My mum and dad divorced when I was young so I missed out on all of that. There was no one telling me what was right and what was wrong. So for me, I needed to make sure I was there. I would be on the sideline; I was very hard on Roger. Even when he was with the Roosters, we would sit down on Wednesdays to go through the video of that week's game. I will never lay hands on my kids but I'm very firm on them and I totally believe that you have to start from a young age. Even now, sometimes I don't know when to switch off. The kids are getting older and they start to tell me to chill and relax but it's just the way I am.
I didn't make any rep team but I made the Auckland squad as a coach and a trainer and that's where I saw everything. I realised, "Oh my gosh, this is what I missed out on." I didn't have any discipline. I've realised it's not just the talent that will get you there. New Zealand has got so many talented kids out there and when a team picks someone it's not special to them, it's just another kid, to give them a try. In Sydney, when people start talking about Roger, I say, "You think he's good?" There are like a thousand kids out in New Zealand 10 times better. Problem is, they don't know how to get there. Talent isn't going to get them there, it's all hard work. I was there to make sure he worked for it.
Paula Beaton, mother of Jamie Beaton, who was a teenage multimillionaire and runs a $200 million education company, aged 24
The day I confirmed that I was pregnant with Jamie, my husband and I separated.
Within a couple of weeks, I became part of a three-generational family. Jamie was brought up for the first 5 or 6 years by my mum and dad and me. So it was a very, very engaged upbringing. He was the centre of our lives. I think he was lavished with a huge amount of time and energy and enthusiasm and love. It's that whole idea of it taking a village to bring up children. You can see that very much when you're talking to Chinese families, just how engaged the grandparents are. Not just in a visiting kind of way but on a day-to-day level. I think because he's part of a three-generational family, Jamie really sees wisdom in older people in terms of life advice.
We always had this idea of giving Jamie loads of activities. Not as in things to spoil him but it might be colouring or it might be writing. I would never just take him to the shops and expect him to be good in the trolley. I think when I started to get some idea that he was somewhat different, in a good way, was that even at 3 and 4 he was really happy to be engaged in all sorts of learning activities. It wasn't as if it was a chore.
I was really astonished at how young Jamie was when success came but I don't think I ever doubted that that level of success would come to him, simply because he was so energetic and enthusiastic.
From when Jamie was born, I was always in my own business and, because it was very full-on, Jamie was always part of it. He would often come in weekends to meetings with clients, so he very much saw how business operated. I think that might have been one of the catalysts for what he did later. He would always make suggestions about businesses. Always. He was always incredibly … I suppose the word might be "opinionated". He always had ideas on everything.
I would say every child is different. But in general, apart from making sure that they have loads of different activities, I would absolutely support a high level of engagement with children. For example, I think in Western cultures you do homework in a quiet room or you go away and you play quietly. In our family, Jamie was always in the busy family environment. When Jamie started school, I could tell you exactly what book he was reading. Any speech he was doing at school, I could recite the speech because we were practising it so much.
Advice to new parents? When you look at a rugby game in New Zealand, after the game everyone analyses every try - the people, the player, how they look, everything. When kids do exams or any assignment, get them used to that approach. Every learning opportunity is something to analyse or scrutinise. It's really healthy competition – not with other people but with yourself. The same competitive analysis that goes into sport, how about looking like that in the education field? I know it sounds like it's a sacrifice but it's not really. It's such a short time. When you have a child, the world is before them and it takes so little to set them on that path.
Paulette and Garry Nott, parents of 4, including Caleb and Georgia Nott - AKA Broods
Paulette: There is a lot of intrinsic musicality in the children. I can think of one instance when we were just walking to our gate when Georgia would have been maybe 2. She could hardly speak. And there was a big truck idling outside our house and she just started moving, dancing to the idling of the truck, the "chugga chugga chugga" of the truck and said, "Mummy, music!" And Caleb naturally would do the air guitar thing. Garry ended up making him a little plywood guitar-shaped thing.
Other children would come home and watch Barney or whatever after kindy or school, but they would watch Lord of the Dance and prance around and do Irish dancing. Caleb did it at a talent quest when he was 5, his Riverdance routine.
I was involved in the pre-school, going to music sessions, so they would see us playing guitar. But there's a massive amount that's just natural. Garry's dad, in particular, is very musical, my parents were very musical, so it's hard to draw the line of where does nature become nurture.
Yes, siblings have rivalry and fighting and things like that. But early on, we said it seems to be expected that children will fight but let's set the expectation that they will be friends. So let's not accept when they treat each other badly. Let's not accept when they don't get on. Let's nurture the relationship. If they had a fight, I'd send them to their room together. Say, "right, do not come out until you've sorted it out, until you're friends and you're happy."
Now they all adore each other, it's lovely. Caleb doesn't hero-worship Georgia but he just thinks she's the bee's knees. And always has done. Always thought she was the funniest thing, always enjoyed her company, was always inclusive of her. It was never, "I'm the oldest and you'll do as I say." He's always admired her. He's her biggest fan and she's his biggest fan.
Advice to new parents? Just relax and enjoy them because it's so short, it really is. Make your children a priority. Nice furniture, having an immaculate house … when you've got kids around a) those things are impossible and b) what does it matter?
Garry: We played a lot of guitar at home, we played at church. I think if kids grow up with parents who are musicians, they grow up thinking, "Well it's in me, it's gotta be in me."
We didn't have a whole lot of other distractions. We were pretty strong on never having any PlayStations or X-Box. The only thing they could really play around with was a whole lot of instruments. It was never, "Oh these kids have talent, let's make them practise".
We just allowed them to go ahead with what their dreams were. One thing we never put pressure on them to do was get a real job. We told them, "No matter what you're doing, learn something while you're doing it."
As a parent, you've got to be relaxed. For us, when we had Georgia we thought, "Oh well she'll be similar to Caleb. She's actually quite different." The next one was quite different and the next one was quite different again. I think you've just got to go with it. It's one of those jobs you don't go off and train for; you fly by the seat of your pants and do the best job you can.
We look at it and think, "Well, what are they like as adults?" They're doing really well with their music and we're really proud of them for that. But we are just as proud that they're actually really good human beings.
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