Who plays music or understands theory?

I give guitar lessons and teach the proper dosage of music theory along with it. The problem that I run into quite often is that parents desire more for their child to read and dismiss the hard working process that goes into developing techniques on the instrument.  I played various styles of guitar playing for more than 30 years. Woopy do!   Now I sit at home with the kids and work on Wes Montgomery pieces. My musical ear was fully developed from hearing my uncles play jazz piano around the house. My father played jazz guitar in the 30's and 40's.. When I worked with showbands I would tape the chord charts to the stage floor as I only had 3 days to memorize 65 show tunes. I worked with a guy from New York that was multi talented. He taught me the N.Y. musicians short hand method of writing chord charts and reading them. I had a lot of primitive culture type musical training as well from blues and jazz musicians on the road. I told once that I sounded like a Dennis Sandoli student. Sandoli was an avant-garde composer and a master of guitar in Philadelphia. He would not except me for a student due to the simple fact that I was mostly a wrist kinda guy. At the age of 28 he wanted me to start all over and use the fore-arm. I use the fore-arm a bit when I play John McLaughlin pieces. But for Alan Holdsworth or Wes Montgomery I don't. He saw that as a flaw. So that was a bit of a blow.