Val and passthepotatoes,

I think your responses are very mean-spirited and can't understand the point of posting them. They are not constructive at all and you both seem to reading way too much into my posts (For instance, every kid who takes piano does at least one recital a year. Why would anyone who has ever had a piano lesson or had a child who had a piano lesson even question that?). Passthepotatoes if you took piano for six years and can barely remember anything then maybe you have some underlying issues with regards to this topic. Val, same thing with being bitter about having spend an hour a week doing something you didn't like.

I appreciate all the other responses. I think perhaps many people here are unfamiliar with the Suzuki method and do not understand that parental invovlement is REQUIRED. We (oops, sorry - The boys) have moved away from that as I want the kids to work independently. However, my son is only eight and really doesn't have the organizational skills to practice effectively completely independently. Again, I question the experiences of some of the posters. AN eight year-old playing pretty well is going to have a harder time practicing completely on his own than an eight year old playing Mary Had a Little Lamb. But seeing as this issue is not resolving itself, I will try to keep any involvement to an absolute bare minumum and ill ask his teacher to assign him things to practice with the aim of elimiating my involvement completely. I asked for advice and I am willing to take it!


La Texican, I do think he may be looking for consistency. He semed almost relieved when I told him he was goign to go first every day. He made a show of acting annoyed for about 30 seconds, but it didn't seem sincere. In very short term I am going to aim for consistency but also try and make it very easy. The two are not at all mutually exclusive.

Dandy, regarding the breaks - we took a long vacation over Thanksgiving and things were noticably worse after that. I think it;s jsut my kids, not necessarily true in general, but they seem to do better with an every day schedule. I think it's better when they know exactly what to expect. However, with your advice in mind i think if I do let him quit I will present it as a break. I think it will be tough for us to go back ,but I see no downside in sying "OK, you can have a break." As opposed to "OK, you can quit."