My 10 year old son with motor dyspraxia, who has taken piano lessons since age 5 but was always reluctant to play in front of other people, did really well at his first piano recital today. He played the Jeopardy theme and Jingle Bells with no mistakes and his timing was really good. I wonder if all the time spent on Rock Band has helped with that.

He even memorized the Jeopardy theme. It is the first time he has ever memorized a song. He never tried before. I had a hard enough time getting him to practice. He would only play if he had the sheet music in front of him. I always wondered if his motor learning disability had something to do with his reluctance to try to memorize a song. He always had such an incredible memory for words, could memorize hundreds of words quickly, but motor memory was a problem and so was the "glitch" that occasionally caused him to play notes with the wrong hand.

He saw that some of the other kids who did not have dyspraxia made mistakes and it was okay. It was fun and that is what it is supposed to be--fun.

I think the piano teacher did the right thing by giving him easier music to play for the recital than he is used to playing in lessons because he now has the confidence to play in front of other people and he is looking forward to playing piano now.

He recently found a Youtube video of someone playing a song called "To Zanarkand" that was from a Final Fantasy video game. He downloaded the sheet music for the song and realized that it was harder than what he had worked on in his lessons but took it to his teacher anyway and asked how long it would be before he could play this song. The song looked like it was at an intermediate level and the piano teacher played it and thought it sounded really nice. She told him if he wanted they could break up the song over several lessons and he could even do it at the next recital if he wanted, so he is really happy about this.

She is a great piano teacher for a twice exceptional kid.