Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Learning Environments incentives

This is more a parental vent. I know some of the responses I am going to get on motivation and intiative. DD5 is showing motivation and iniative for things like math. Yes, it is summer, yes, she is on the beach most of the day, but DH bought these math workbooks at the dollar store and DD5 is picking them up after dinner and doing problems. Pages of them.

But we are spending the summer learning to read music. That is our goal for the summer so that she refrains from just memorizing pieces. It is somewhat frustrating and we tend to do it after lunch, after a morning at swim camp. But we are only doing 20 minutes a day and it is like pulling teeth. But I do not want to spend the good money on her piano teacher in the fall and do this when we can just get it done this summer. She is really doing well but hates it. So we decided she could decide on something she really wants and gets a star for everyday she really cooperates and after 50 stars she gets the thing.

It really isn't that hard, and she knows a lot of the basics, but trying to get her to change the habit of reading the music, instead of memorizing, is painful -- for me. We are using the easiest pieces in her book, but then she can play them easily and memorize them easily also. So then we have to move away from the piano and just get her to tell me the notes. But then by the 3rd day, I think she has just memorized what the notes are.

I just thought of when she was 2 and memorized 30 books we read to her. Soon after that she was reading. I hope for a similarly smooth transition this summer. What a pain.

Ren

I think it is harder to get them to work as they get older. When my DS was 3 he would do anything for ONE m&m LOL Now he has other interests he wants to play vidoe games play on the computer etc. I have to bribe him w/computer time now to get him to do some work so he doesn't go brain dead!

Some scattered thoughts. Take them as you will:

-- maybe a different time of day would be better? There's something about swimming/chlorine that's kind of tiring... or maybe she's hungry.. or, or... Is there time early in the morning before swimming? Or maybe last thing at night (so that she feels like she's getting an extra 20 minutes before she has to go to bed)?

-- rotate "reading" activities. maybe try pieces she doesn't know, so the incentive is she reads a bar, then she plays it and finds out what it sounds like, then reads the next bar, plays it, etc. until she's done the whole piece. and play games like "guess that note" where you play a note while she's not looking at the piano and she has to guess what that note is (and maybe write it down?) Or give her sections of pieces that she already knows and have her read them so that she can figure out what piece it is. (Does that make sense? Like the third bar of Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star or something). Mix it up, and make it seem more like play than work.

-- And finally, go easy on herself and you. There's no reason she has to be a sight reader by August. Hopefully, you'll have a lifelong music lover, and one day she'll be reading the most astounding pieces. She can get to that place from insane amounts of exposure, sprinkled with a bit of formal teaching. (This reminds me of my typing skills. Haven't needed to look at the keyboard in well over a decade; wasn't taught that -- just exposure.)

G'luck and remember to have fun!

The only positive thing that works for my ds7 is earning "minutes". His bedtime is 7.30pm - but he can earn minutes in many ways that he can then redeem to stay up later. We keep a log of his minutes - we randomly give them to him, usually 5 at a time - but he can also lose them. This has worked way better than long term goals - such as getting so many stickers on a chart or whatever. Last night he used 5 minutes to stay up later so he could sit and snuggle with me on the couch a little longer

OH Lord ... don't tell me this. LOL My DD has never been the type to do anything unless she wants to and incentives never worked on her BUT I was hoping as she got older it would. Back to the drawing board for me.

IE. Potty training - we bought her this beautiful Calico Doll House that she was begging for but she could have cared less once it was in the house. It sat there for nearly a year before she finally decided to potty train. grrrr

IE. Reading - DD knew all her letters and sounds before she was 18 months and even showed an interest in reading right before turning 2 because she recognized a lot of words but the minute I sat down with her to 'teach' her anything it was met with resistance and refusal. Nothing I would offer her would change that. But one day she sat down with the Bob books and decided she was going to read and did. But even today, if she isn't in the mood she isn't going to give in to it. And I have to wonder how this is going to effect her schooling. Right now she is happy to do whatever they are doing in class and maybe it's because I'm not doing it.

LOL @ Kathlyn's mom. I chose to ignore that gets-harder-when-they're-older bit. Will cross that bridge when we get there. But, yes, there is something to that not-mommy factor. (Which, btw, Ren, makes me wonder if maybe the music lessons might be worth it. Just b/c she doesn't enjoy doing it with you doesn't mean she won't do it w/ someone else.)

NCPMom - Neat idea. Unfortunately, we don't run like clockwork in this house, so not sure we could apply something like that, but still, I can see how that would be a great incentive.

I don't know whether it'll help, but I think this is a good thing! It's all very convenient to adults when young children can be motivated into doing something by a bribe or threat, regardless of the worth of the thing itself, but that's fundamentally childish. Surely what we should be encouraging is that they choose whether to do something or not based on whether it's the right thing to do (and that they realise that sometimes that is the same as whether they want to do it, and sometimes not!)

I get what you are saying and I do agree with you BUT I'm afraid DD's lack of wants has more to do with her perfectionism. Going back to the reading: All of her learning was self motivated. This was the kid at 6 months bringing book after book over to me and asking what's this? and what's that? I certainly had no plans to teach her the abcs but if I didn't answer her or when I tried to engage her in something else it never worked. She had a drive to know and I answered her questions. Then around 15 months she learned the sounds of all the letters. And between 18 months and before 2 years she was recognizing all the store names and many words in the books that we were required to read to her over and over. Our day was all about books. This kid would have been happy with just books. But when we showed excitement about her abilities she freaked out and went into hiding. She dropped reading immediately and I left it alone. Once and a while when she showed interest I would attempt to 'teach' her but learned really quickly that it wasn't a good idea. I finally decided that when she is ready she will let me know and she did, but I think the reason she wasn't ready was because she wasn't 'perfect' at it. The minute she makes a mistake she clams up and has nothing to do with it.

So without forcing them or using incentives which doesn't work on DD; how do you get them to try and accept that you have to practice? That is the big question that I still haven't figured out.

Colinsmum, I disagree that incentives are always childish. Personally, I wouldn't do the unpleasant parts of my job if I weren't getting paid. Students work harder in college to keep their grades up. It's part of how the world works.

It's lovely when they are intrinsically motivated to do good things, and we give high praise when our kids show that kind of motivation. But when they're not, I don't think there's anything wrong with an appropriate incentive (deployed in advance, not as a midstream negotiation).

Ren, I know my kids would never be able to do a task like learning to read music right after swimming; they are always brain dead for a while after the pool. And I don't think I'd be inclined to force the issue with something "optional" like reading music, not with a child that young. She might just hate it later because she was pushed, which would be a shame. But your mileage may vary.

Just my two cents,
DeeDee

What happens if you just let them work it out for themselves? I mean, don't teach, don't correct, just help when asked? (This is different from waiting till she's ready for you to teach her, which might never happen. It's not always that easy - John Holt wrote about the "teacher devil" sitting on his shoulder, and his struggles to get rid of it, and this struck a chord with me!) The importance of practice is pretty obvious from one's own experience, after all; I don't think I buy the idea that children have to be taught this. Crows seem to learn that they have to practise using sticks to get things out of bottles, after all - it isn't a very sophisticated concept. I daresay it can't hurt for parents to model it - doing things they don't find easy, persevering, using their intelligence to get better - but I doubt that that's all that important. Personally I find it plausible that undermotivated adults are those who as children had too much extrinsic motivation as children, not too little.

I hear a lot of moms saying their child will work with someone else and not them. One friend is so mad she spends so much on a tutor because her son will listen to the tutor but not her.

I guess it depends on the child. My 2nd son is 3 now and will not work with me at all. I am hoping that changes later on. I dk though because my 1st son always would work with me. I have a feeling I will be paying a lot of money on a tutor for 2nd one !

By the way those bob books were great when they 1st start reading.

Thanks for all the useful info. I like switching the pieces around but her regular teacher gave us a list and specific instructions. We have a student teach her at the beach.

There is a reason for this. She has been playing quite complicated pieces. We have tried to make them "simpler" to start getting her to read the music but but they were never simple enough that she was interested enough to play them and could start at the beginning to read them.

So it was a plan to break her pattern of memorizing pieces by giving me simple enough pieces that have dynamics and polyphonics and work with her over the summer. And her reward is getting to go back to really complicated pieces she loves to play but get her to read the music while learning to play them.

And it really isn't that hard to get the basics of reading the music but she just wants to play something fun instead what we are working on. And although she can memorize amazing amounts of info when she wants to, getting her to remember Good Boys Do Fine Always seems very difficult. But I think her brain isn't letting her be so resistant to repition and by the end of July she will have it down. I was in the next room when she had her piano lesson today and the student/teacher was thrilled she actually looked up while playing. She told me that it is difficult to teach her because her memory is so good. Yes, how does that make sense? But she can memorize the piece before she has to read the music to play it.

And I would like to change the time of day. But...it is also a time when she needs to be out of the sun. And later on, there have been snacks shared, sometimes sugar filled, on the beach, which has its own challenges.

Ren

Ren - One thing to try is to shorten the session, or divide them in half and do 2 shorted sessions.

Another thing to try is to let her 'compete' with you to see who can learn the notes faster.

I think someone mentioned the idea of letting her practice by writing down a song she knows or has written herself. That might make more sense to her.

When you first mentioned sight reading I had a picture of learning the names of the letter, and associating where on the piano the various pictoral notes lived. But your description sounds different. If the job is mostly learning to identify the notes by name, my son showed me a great trick. His teacher held her left hand with the fingers slightly spread. The fingers then represented the lines of the staff. Then the teacher touched either the space between the fingers, or a finger and asked 'what letter is this?'

It might be even cooler if you could play a note on a small keyboard and asked your DD to point to the note on her hand, in addition to training of associating the position with a letter. Or your DD might enjoy 'playing' a song on her fingers as she sings along.

Even if you aren't the main teacher, you might find some part of it that could be a special activity between you and your dd - perhaps 'txtmessaging' on your fingers back and forth words that use the letters A through G by pointing to the fingers and spaces in between? (perhaps touch your palm to signify any letter H or beyond?) I haven't ever done this, so let me know if it works. I guess if you want it to work you might have to teacher her finger signing for letters H-Z.

Best Wishes,
Grinity

We had the exact same issue with memorization when my son was learning to read music. He'd play something and memorize it almost immediately. We found the following sight reading books.

http://www.mnmusicteachers.com/productdetail.php?id=10

2 things with this book. These are all one line pieces, so it's easy to say we're going to sight read one a day and that's it (my kid was not a fan of learning to read when playing by ear was so easy at the time). They are usually quite random notes. So they aren't in a nice tune like pattern that is easy to figure out. When I sensed he had memorized one, we'd just move onto the next one. By the time we had worked through the 4th book, he had moved on to reading all his music. Now to the point that we are working on a piece, we have to work on memorizing it.

Morning practices work well for us too. I'm not sure either of my kids could take a music practice after a morning of swimming. Sometimes things that take twice as long when they're tired!

My daughter (who is close in age to yours) starting having a horrible time practicing this summer! It was taking an hour or more to get 20-30 minutes worth of practice done. And much of that was perfectionist dramatics ("So hard", "I can't do it"). I had to lay out a incentive plan for her that's going to end in a $10 toy if she can get 100 beads on a string. I put a bead on if she does something without complaining or throwing herself on the floor. I get to remove one if she is unwilling to try something when asked. We had one excellent practice this morning!

Anyway, I know exactly where you're coming from, so if nothing else I'm sending sympathy. Summers can be hard!

Thanks for the ideas. The hand thing won't Grinity, though thanks for the idea, because what do you do with notes way above or below or sharps and flats?

I think we just have to move on with the pieces.

And I am keeping it short. 20 minutes. With 10 minutes of it being scales, to keep her hands moving. So it is not long. But still not easy.

Ren

Hi - Can't really think of much, and I don't know how much help I'll be since we're taking most of the summer off from piano! But I remember DS6's teacher covering his hands with a book when he wasn't looking at the notes. This helped to get him to look, anyway. Good luck! kimck -I like the bead idea; might have to steal that.

I go through this as well. I outsourced the sight reading - just can't deal. The occasional playing supervision is enough for me.

One thing I've noticed (but can never manage to implement) is that not only do I tend to sympathize with my children's reluctance to spend time playing piano, practicing math, writing, etc, but I don't enjoy it either (well, I enjoy the math, but not the other stuff). So I tend to try to push them to approach the tasks very efficiently so that "we" can achieve our goals quickly and be done. And this just doesn't work. But I can't help it! It's also a little difficult because with two kids close in age, one is at loose ends while I work with the other. In the past we had good results working on piano immediately following breakfast and before school, but I've been going into work earlier so this is no longer an option.

Sounds like you have just the one child and a fair amount of time on your hands, so I would suggest spending MORE time on this task. Make it quality time together and just hang out and talk about what you are doing.

It does sound like perhaps trying to follow the methodology prescribed by your daughter's teacher may be making it more difficult. Not that it's not the best, most efficient, approach, but it may not be the easiest and most pleasant for you and your daughter. I wuld be curious to hear what she is playing and what approach she takes to the regular practicing. Do you normally supervise her playing? Are you using the Suzuki method? I'm trying to understand if you are just working with her on sight reading or if you are working with her on her playing as well and if this is one activity or two?

DS9 is a big memorizer too. He just listens to a piece and can play it back perfectly. His piano instructor started playing a card game with him called Snap. I'm not sure how it's played, but it's kind of like speed with music notes on the cards. That has really helped him learn to read the notes and he enjoys the game. You could probably do something like Go Fish or Old Maid with music notes on the cards with your DD.

The other thing we do is we let him pick out a piece he wants to learn especially if it's above his level and then we give him a piece we want him to learn. So, right now he's learning the James Bond theme music that he chose and something else the teacher assigned. He enjoys the challenge of learning the harder piece he chose and will then be more compliant playing the "boring" piece the teacher chose at his level.

DD is in the "Russian" method. They look down on Suzuki. Interesting that I met a violinist who learned on Suzuki and said it was very hard for her to learn to read music in that method.

So the pieces she plays are in the Russian piano books. The easy pieces we have for this summer are in book 2. She does a lot of Studies. And I do supervise, otherwise, she would just play the way she wants to play, super fast, without regard to dynamics.

And I think we are getting over the hump. Yesterday, I went to the spa and her father worked with her and he said she had this "block" and then it was gone and everything went very easily and she remembered it like she had been doing it for years. So it was just mind over matter.

Ren

Not to get off topic, but I think this is a common misconception by teachers outside the Suzuki method. Not that there aren't bad Suzuki teachers out there not taking a balanced approach. But there are bad music teachers out there across the boards.

Both my kids take Suzuki. My kindy violinst started sight reading exercises a few months ago. My piano playing son does at least half his music from outside the Suzuki repertoire and learns everything with the music, two handed, sight reading. He has done theory classes and exams through his Suzuki teacher. Our music school encourages a balanced approach. String students do orchestra and sight reading classes from early ages.

That being said, I think there are some students who really resist working on the sight reading piece of it for whatever reason. I think the opportunities are there, but teachers can't force you to work on it. I grew up taking Suzuki violin in the 70's and 80's. I had no problem learning to read music for violin.

To the OP, I don't think it is such a problem. I would just be glad that she is interested in playing music. Reading music is an enabling skill, in that she will be able to expose herself to a wider range of written material, and also more easily self-teach music theory.

But in the end I think that the single most important thing about learning music is to play and enjoy playing. Also, when your daughter memorizes a piece learned by any method, she internalizes it, just as she would if she originally got the piece into her brain by reading it from a printed page. I think it is actually a better indicator of musical talent, and a better starting skill to have, to internalize a piece of music by simply hearing it than by reading it.

I don't think you will be wasting money on a good piano teacher if your child can't read music by the fall, either. If your teacher gives written lessons, that will likely help to resolve the reading issue quickly, since your daughter will probably memorize the small pieces and compare them with the written notes in front of her as she plays. Plus there are all sorts of non-written things that a good music teacher teaches, including beginning theory, posture, fingering, breathing, etc.

If I can add a suggestion... do different songs each day. This forces her to read the music and does not give her a chance to memorize. Just work on sight reading. Give her a few new songs each day and give her only one or two chances to play each song. You can pick up exercise books of varying levels and just blast through them. A lot have rhythm/clapping/other exercises to mix in as well. You can make a challenge out of how many new songs she can play each day or how slow/fast she can play each or play the right notes but make up her own rhythms to see how different she can make the song sound. You could also pick up a pad of staff paper and have her compose her own song and write it out.

Her teacher is obviously aware that she memorizes. Maybe ask her about adding in sight reading exercises next year. I taught piano through university and I had a few kids who were memorizers. We would spend time sight reading each lesson.

My daughter is probably the 'worst' memorizer out there. But, as she often reminds me, she has her own piano teacher. I have been instructed to stay completely out of it (by both of them). I can't even be around when she practices because we butt heads too much. I leave it to the teacher and dad and DD. If they want help, they ask. I would love to sit down with her and work on her sight reading, but that would never fly in this house.

Good luck!

We had the same problem, DS4 easily remember all the pieces he just played once or twice, or memoried by just listening
which is..musical talnet

but also caused the trouble of the speed of site reading notes

Our piano teacher gave him music pieces that he never seen and let him played. Or let him play first before he listen them

DD is going back to the same piano teacher in the fall. She auditioned for this teacher, so we are happy with her.

During the summer, while we are at the beach, we just decided to focus on the sight reading. And the teacher laid out a program. So I happy to get the suggestions. It is just boring for her and she was resistant. You know how it is when a child gets resistant. But we are over the hump over the last few days and she is getting into her theory book. Strange, now that school is over she is doing workbooks, math, piano, phonics. DH gets them at a dollar store and she is going through them. Particularly math. Too much beachtime?

Ren

Many people told me, it is very important to get a good piano teacher from beginning, some teachers just had no experince for talent student, like ours.

I went to students piano ratical yesterday, one of 9 yeard old boy display very high level technique skill which at least grade 8 or higher, his mom told me they have changed a few teachers until they found the right one, then her son toke off in just a few years.

Funny thing is, this boy played whole music without looking any notes, he must had expentional memory too.

For math...I rather play numbers game with my son,get him idea the connection and pattern of the numbers,try to sole a math problems with different ways even a very simple one, it will help the math ability in long run.