DD is due to go on her school’s week-long music tour to Italy in two weeks’ time. This is a trip that takes place every two years - the school orchestras and chamber choir spend a week travelling around, sightseeing in the day and doing concerts in the evenings.
This year they’re going to Tuscany - about 50 girls and 8 teachers will be travelling 24 hours by coach to get there. Obviously, the coach will be pretty packed, so the girls have been told that any instruments bigger than a flute/clarinet will have to go in the luggage store under the coach. DD is a violinist so her violin falls into this category.
However, there are a few violinists at the school who have extremely valuable violins (probably worth £10,000+). These girls are all musical prodigies from extremely musical families.
They seem to have quietly been given an exemption from this rule and will be allowed to have their violins next to them on the coach (I imagine their parents wouldn’t allow them to go on the trip in any other circumstances).
DD’s violin is pretty much worthless in monetary terms, but it is of huge sentimental value to her. It belonged to her beloved grandmother, who recently died. It’s German-made from the 1850s and rather beautiful, but it’s not from a famous violin maker and only the body is original. When her grandmother gave it to her a few years ago - having not played for 20 years after developing arthritis in her hands - we found it was in very poor condition. We paid to have it restored so that DD could play it, but everything apart from the body had to be replaced.
DD feels that the sentimental value of her violin is equal to the monetary value of the other girls’ violins, and means she should also be allowed to have it with her on the coach. I’m sympathetic to this, and have asked the school, but have been told that there just isn’t room on the coach for anyone else to have their instrument with them.
DD is now saying she’d rather not go on the trip at all, as she’s so worried that harm will befall her violin. While I understand her concern, she hadn’t mentioned this once before she found out about the other girls’ being given an exemption. It only seems to have become an issue for her when she found out that it didn’t apply to absolutely everyone. She seems very offended by the suggestion that these girls’ violins are more important than hers, when they’re all ‘equally irreplaceable.’ I think she also has a bit of an inferiority complex with the super-musical girls - she’s a great violinist, and works very hard, but she doesn’t have their level of effortless talent and definitely won’t be making music her career.
I really don’t want her to drop out at this stage - we’ve already paid for the trip, and I think she’ll end up really regretting it if she misses it. Swanning around Tuscany for a week and performing music with her friends sounds utterly wonderful. Additionally, I asked the music teachers and not a single instrument has been lost or damaged in all the years they’ve been running this trip - so DD is almost certainly worrying about nothing.
She’s not a defiant child, and if I tell her she’s getting on that coach, she will. Am I being unfair to insist she goes?