Monica Yant Kinney: A fine and delicate balance

Six months ago, Carson Atlas' entire piano repertoire consisted of "Amazing Grace," a song he taught himself noodling around on his family's Baldwin.

On May 8, the 8-year-old third grader from Haverford will put on a tiny tuxedo and take the stage at the Annenberg Center for the finals of a hard-fought national "Classical Music Idol" competition in which the newcomer has outplayed performers twice his age who've been studying longer than he's been alive.

In the audience, Leah Atlas will juggle her camcorder, pride, joy, and, if she's being honest, a bit of confusion.

Carson started talking at four months and reading after his second birthday. He's in the gifted program at Coopertown Elementary, studies Chinese on weekends, and - for fun - started teaching himself Latin at night before bed.

"We always knew he was smart," Leah explains. "We had no idea he was musical."

So what now? What do you do when you discover your child is so smart, so musical, so gifted he might be in a class by himself?

"One thing you don't do is tell friends who have kids," Leah says wearily, as if she learned the hard way. "It doesn't go over well."

And yet, in many ways her dilemmas are universal. It's a fine line between following a child's lead and forcing him in a particular direction. Is it better to focus youthful energy on one activity - think Tiger Woods - or allow curious kids to explore many passions they might never master?

"I tell all parents they're only going to be little once; they'll be smart forever," says Sharon Donnelly, Coopertown's gifted teacher. "Find balance, because they'll never get their childhood back."

That advice helped Leah and Alan Atlas - she's an interior designer, he's a dentist - decide not to move Carson into private school or skip a grade.

"We want Carson to be socially comfortable," she explains. "He seems so much older, but emotionally, he's still an 8-year-old boy."

This boy doesn't run as fast as his friends, and he had to overcome a fear of heights to use the swings at recess. He loves soccer, baseball, Harry Potter, Mad Libs, Legos, and Michael Jackson. "The music," he's quick to say, "not the man."

Carson begged for violin lessons for years, but Leah brushed him off, thinking, "You can't let them do everything they want to do."

The Atlases - their younger son, Caden, is 7 - learn Chinese as a family. So last summer Leah finally told the boys they could all study violin together, too.

"But by the third lesson," she recalls, "Carson had gone so far beyond me, I put mine back in the case and haven't taken it out since."

In November, Carson took up piano. By March - after twice-weekly lessons at the Nelly Berman School of Music - he'd mastered the first movement of the Beethoven Sonatina in F Major.

"Normally," Berman says, "that takes four or five years."

The Atlases avoid the "P" word, so I ask the educators who know Carson best whether prodigy fits.

"With him, yes," Donnelly says without hesitation. "We see a lot of gifted kids. He's by far the most."

Nelly Berman credits her intense Russian-method instruction for taking Carson from 0 to 60, but marvels at how far her young charge has traveled so fast.

"Musical inspiration - this, I cannot teach," she says, waving dramatically at her towheaded pupil. "This, he has."

Berman urged Carson to enter the competition for the experience. He wasn't supposed to surpass 200 serious students to the semifinals, let alone become one of 25 finalists. "He can't win," Leah says, almost happily. "So many things come so easily for him, he learns good lessons when he loses."

In the car on the way home from his lesson, Carson is true to his age, eating a granola bar and dodging questions about his deep feelings.

The competition, he shares, takes place on his ninth birthday. What he's really hoping for is an ice cream cake.

See Carson Atlas play piano via http://go.philly.com/carsonatlasEndText