Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy Piano lesson complaining - LONG

Kimck, I just moved you from my #1 vote. Dandy, you must mean Lucy-fer because that's where you learned to talk like that. All hail Dandy. King of grand central station, Train Locker C-18.

I wonder if Jane's son is just naturally quick. For people who want to move quickly, slowing down can increase the difficulty associated with something.

By way of example, sometimes my skating teacher or other people at the rink comment on how fast I go when I jump. Not because I'm dangerous or super-good, but because most adult skaters are more conservative than I am, so I stand out a bit. For me, speed and height are fun, and are a major draw of skating. If I slow down at the wrong time, I'm more likely to mess up. Alternatively, when I'm zooming through a waltz jump, I can fly! It's great!

I wonder if the speed thing might be fun and/or natural for Jane's son, too. Jane, if you haven't fled this thread in horror, have you thought about giving him some short pieces that are meant to be played very fast?

Val

LOL - it's ok. I thought Dandy's post was great too. And I employ very similar techniques to get practice done around here. 3 little kittens ask my 6 year old to do repetitions. Lego characters battle on our piano. We have a puppet we call "evil practice dragon". We have a staples easy button we push when the kids have mastered something - "That was easy!". We're in with the bubble gum flavored toothpaste too.

Got it ... good question. Coming from an art background my guess is Music is a complex activity. They have to not only learn the notes but also beat which leads into math. Drawing is a more free form activity. Children will not necessarily have the ability to articulate their vision. And if drawing was taught with structure it would definitely lead to frustration. Creativity for dance and drawing/art is achievable but the requirements are less than music. (If that makes sense.) But ALL are important.

IMHO, music combines and develops:

--gross motor skills
--fine motor skills
--creativity / interpretive skills / intuition
--history
--perceiving and using part/whole relationships and abstract form
--emotional awareness
--awareness of/ quantification of time

(and probably more)

All the arts are good for this kind of multifaceted learning. But I think music is especially nice for its mix of abstractness and concreteness.

DeeDee

It's an interesting question, whether one can force a child to love the piano: sort of a Stockholm approach to music appreciation. I guess it's possible that the musical knowledge gained through "encouraged" practice might result in the ability to pick up other instruments a person winds up loving.

I just don't remember the last time I read about a musical genius who was forced to study music, or a particular instrument, despite lack of interest. I thought Beethoven was an example, but it appears that there's no support for the idea that he was forced to practice in misery. Thus it seems unlikely that there's a massive hothousing effect to be gotten by forced practice for the highly gifted, who tend to be stubborn by nature. Still, we're not all cut out to be music geniuses, and there's value for the rest of us in appreciating and playing music.

So I'm on the fence. I have been thinking about starting DS5 on piano lessons, but then again, he's asked (we have had a nice consumer Yamaha keyboard since he was an infant, and he's been trying out chords lately on his own).

I think that there is a strong but usually unspoken idea in American culture, at least, that playing music enhances math ability and perhaps other areas of general cognitive ability as well. I don't know if it's based on anything real, but would be interested to learn. Is it a sort of hothouser's meme, based on popularly hyped notions like the Mozart effect? It seems certain that music, which is like DeeDee says a complex activity with many things going for it, is better than sitting around picking one's nose for developing general cognitive ability, except for fine motor control of that one finger, and maybe developing a mental 3D model of the unseen.

I have a lot of thoughts on this issue, but not enough time--I did hear Yo Yo Ma interviewed and he said he hated practicing as a child. It doesn't seem to have scarred him!

I would be very cautious about generalizing based on the experience of child prodigies to kids who aren't prodigies. Decisions that make sense for a prodigious child may not make any sense for a child with different talents and needs.

CAMom - It is a safe bet that no matter what you do he will cry less as he gets older. My concern about the current system is that for perfectionist kids it is important to keep the stakes low of trying new things. If he knows every new activity is going to bring on those extreme feelings of despair and helplessness only solvable by other people that isn't an incentive to keep trying activities. If the solution every time is that adults force or push him to get through that further reinforces that he's pretty helpless. I'm wondering if more progress and success may be made in advance planning including creating a system by which he can take a break until he can get himself feeling calm and back on track.


So, I guess, not surprisingly we are both carrying on family traditions! As a kid I considered my activities my own. I recognized they were a gift in that they were expensive for the family, but I considered it my responsibility to make the most of the gift. I didn't want to parents present or in the middle of it. That would have spoiled it for me because activities were a place for independence, for developing relationships with teachers and teammates that were my own and for taking responsibility for my own learning. I can't imagine my parent being in the middle of it begging me to participate or threatening me. It would have erased what was the value of the activity.


I agree there are significant cultural problems but I don't think more of the same is the solution. Kids do more activities than ever and more parents than ever are more involved in their kids' activities. A generation ago soccer moms weren't the norm. We had moms who were in the other room drinking coffee while their kids rode their bikes to the baseball field.


IT pays the bills here too and we've chosen not to have electronics at the center of our home. It is an option, maybe not an appealing one to you, but it does exist as an option. The parents' occupation doesn't have to be the defining force behind the way a child spends his or her free time.

My D's violin teacher has been a violinst in the symphony for 40 years. My D was complaining to him about practicing. She loves to play, but doesn't like practicing. Her teacher admitted that, even after 40 years, he still doesn't like practicing.

I'm fairly sure he doesn't cry about it anymore, although I can't confirm that.