Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy Why music practice is the battleground

As a fellow music parent, I've been following the recent threads on piano practice battles, and the recent article on the differences between Asian and Western views of parenting. It's interesting to note how often the battles between parents and children are played out during music practice and it occurred to me that there is a fairly simple reason why this occurs. Perhaps this will shed some light on the issue, especially for those parents whose children do not play and instrument, and are probably wondering why the rest of us put ourselves through it!

One of the biggest differences between the serious student athlete and the serious student musician is the amount of time that the student spends under the watchful eye of a teacher or coach. For an athlete, a large proportion of their time spent practicing is in the presence of their coach. For music students, it is quite the opposite. The music student sees their teacher for a relatively small amount of time, maybe an hour or two each week. The vast majority of their practice time is at home. Especially for younger kids, it takes a lot of discipline to be able to manage and effectively utilize all of that practice time. In addition, when problems crop up during practice (as they inevitably do) the student does not have their teacher there to help them work through it. This leaves the parents (and many of us are not musicians ourselves) to try to help the child through the difficult spots. I know that my DD gets downright bellicose when she is having trouble with something during practice. In her lessons, she is much calmer (aren't all kids different with teachers than they are with parents?). It would be SO much easier for her teacher to get her over the obstacle, but the reality is that she sees him only once a week. The rest of the time, she is stuck with me. Is it any wonder that music practice is the scene for so much child-parent conflict?

And for many GT kids, their instrument is one of the only things that actually challenges them and requires serious effort. That's why so many of us parents are eager for our children to continue with their music.

Thoughts?

DD's piano teacher is on the staff of the Special Music school. Part of their plan is that parents sit in on lessons for young students, I take notes, some videotape the lesson.

So when I do practice with her, 95% of the time, I work with her so that I am not wasting money going over the same stuff. And we work on technique and tempo, things that don't require me to be a musician.

On the sports side. Yes, an athlete does spend a lot of time with the coach -- at the point when they are really, really good. In the beginning, it is the parent who works with the child, whether the father playing catch in the backyard, or the mother doing sit ups with her future gymnast. I sit with a two mothers at gymnastics, who put a bar on their daughter's door so they could practice pullovers and work stomach muscles (started with their daughters at 4). And their daughters (5 & 6) go twice a week to gymnastics. DD6 was feeling badly about how she was not as good so I told her to practice her back bends (something she could hardly start, let alone do). So I helped her every morning to do 3. In 1.5 months she could stand and just bend backwards into a bridge. This was a challenge. The piano is less of a challenge.

Ren

Interesting observations - I think they make sense.

Like your daughter, my kids are 'stuck with me' in between lessons (they see their teacher for 40 minutes once a week, and practice at home 20-30 minutes 4-5 times a week).

The situation reminds me a bit of the quandary I faced years ago when they started having homework: would it benefit them more if I just made sure they spent time on it at home, and let them find out in class that they'd gotten some of it wrong, or if I went over it with them and made them rework problems they didn't 'get'?

I opted for the latter approach, except for the few times when they told me either that the teacher asked that parents not help, or that they preferred to check their work in class.

The reason for my choice is that I think with both homework and music practice, there's some benefit to catching errors early, before they become ingrained habits and have to be actively unlearned.

I've been pulling back from that approach, though, as ds (now in 7th) has gotten older and more self-sufficient. I no longer check that he has done his homework, much less check it for errors. He asks me to quiz him before exams, and what I hear and see then indicates that he's doing a great job without daily oversight by me. (Dd9, in 4th, still needs the oversight.)

To get back to music: I don't know how long either kid will want to continue with it, since each has another extracurricular he/she seems to prefer; but if they study long enough, they may well reach the same level of independence in that area too.

My 12-year-old son's piano lesson is tomorrow morning and I am preparing for the battle. He has not practiced since his 30-minute lesson last week. If he has trouble with it I will not be much help. I'll try, but I only took piano lessons for a year and it was a long time ago. The song he is working on is at an intermediate level. He always tells me that if he practices it wrong then it will be a bigger problem for him than if he just waits until his next lesson.

It would have been so much easier for him if he had come home after the lesson and practiced while it was still fresh in his mind, but I couldn't get him to do it. He said he was too tired and I was too tired to make him. I thought he would practice the next day, but the next day I thought math was more important. He was willing to do more math than usual so I let it go again when he said he was too tired to practice piano. He also has another excuse now. The neurologist talked him into trying amytriptyline for his migraines and now instead of being unable to sleep, he is sleeping too much (12 - 13 hours) and is very hard to wake up in the morning. He moves slowly for a few hours after that. I wonder what his processing speed is like when he is taking this medication. He has maybe 4 or 5 good hours during the day when it wears off enough that he can do things like math and piano and writing so we have to prioritize, but I realize I should have made piano more of a priority. There were times I let him tell me about the interesting things he read and we ended up discussing these interesting things instead of doing piano.

The piano teacher usually knows when he didn't practice and I feel it is partially my fault because I didn't make him do it. We will fight this battle today and he can say he practiced a little instead of not at all.

Piano is challenging for my son who has mild dyspraxia and hypotonia, but he makes a little progress each week even when he doesn't practice.

I think kcab is absolutely right that having a coach present accelerates progress. Unfortunately, that's not how the music world operates. The best one can do is to have frequent lessons, and find a teacher who really teaches the child HOW to practice.

I have to say, however, that having an involved parent is NOT the same as having a coach (unless, perhaps, the parent is a musician herself). I can see kcab's point about not wanting the child to censor his or her feelings of frustration, but I do think that it's different for kids than for adults. My guess is that for most kids the "censorship" that keeps them from having a meltdown in front of a teacher is probably very helpful in creating the calm mindset required to work through a difficult problem, and therefore very conducive to making progress. This is premised, of course, on having a teacher with whom your child has a good "fit."

Yes, I read that article/blog yesterday and perhaps that was one of the things that got me thinking that much the difficulty is due to the fact that music practice occurs without the teacher present.

In Chua's WSJ article, think of how much of that epic battle could have been avoided if the problem had occurred when the teacher was present!

At an advanced level, one can't expect even the brightest and most talented child to figure it out by themselves. Neither can you expect the (non-musician) parent to do so.

DD and I have our struggles, but in a similar situation we would simply continue to muddle along for the rest of the week and then discuss the problem with the teacher at the next lesson.

Unfortunately, we live in the sticks, so the drive to piano is 30 minutes each way, otherwise, I'd gladly pay to have multiple lessons/practices with the teacher during the week.

I sat in on nearly every lesson for the first few years and that was a big help during practices, allowing me to remind DS of the teacher's specific instructions, especially regarding technique and counting in challenging passages. Otherwise, if I'm not certain about how to solve a problem, we table it until the teacher can resolve, either over the phone or in person. (There were a couple of times when we went merrily along only to discover that dear old dad made a mistake that mucked up his efforts for the week. Ouch.)

For the last few months, I've attended very few of the lessons, and can see the difference/efficacy in my involvement with practice time. It's far too easy for him now to say, "That's not what the teacher said!" and as I'm not in a position to know otherwise, I just have to accept his recollection.

He starts back to the ivory grindstone next week after an extended break over Christmas vacation, so all of these conversations will be dancing around in my head, I'm certain.

Three of my kids are in Suzuki violin. DS 10 is on his 6th year, DD 6 on her 3rd year, and DS 5 quit after only 6 months

We've had our share of battles during practice. Since I also took lessons from the same teacher and I was always there during their lessons, the battles have become less and less frequent. My kids have seen that they were able to learn new songs much faster since I was able to help.

I came across this website about the difference in nurturing and pushing:
http://giftedkids.about.com/od/nurturinggiftsandtalents/i/nurture_push.htm

and when nurturing turns into pushing:
http://giftedkids.about.com/od/nurturinggiftsandtalents/qt/pushing.htm

If we had much more time (and money) we might try multiple lessons/week, but we commute an hour each way to lessons.

Also, I think that DD needs a certain amount of practice time to have sufficiently worked on the music, etudes, and exercises that her teacher gives her. A mid-week lesson might not really add that much in the end.

It is worth noting music isn't alone as many parents and kids fight quite a lot over homework too. I've heard from many parents they fought quite a lot about homework, but very little over actually homeschooling. I suspect the difference is that the kids are more tired in the evening when they are doing homework and also parents have control to modify assignments that don't work for the kid for whatever reason.

I'd say there are lots of reasons why music is the battleground for many though.

1. It is expensive so parents feel stressed if kids don't take it seriously.

2. Many parents have unrealistic expectations expecting music to give their kids discipline, work ethic, etc. I've often heard it suggested on gifted boards for what essentially amounts to a substitute for a good academic fit.

I would suggest he raise this issue with his teacher and make a plan for how to deal with it if this situation arises. If he or she would prefer he doesn't play the newest piece he should certainly have a repertoire of earlier pieces or scales that he could practice to keep up his muscle memory.

My personal take is that part of the process of learning is that yes, sometimes you learn something wrong. Just like many of our early readers ended up mispronouncing all sorts of words over time that corrects itself.

Absolutely. But other people don't tend to question (or judge) parents for having battles over homework. Homework is required (by most schools). Music lessons are not.

I don't see music lessons as a substitute for a good academic fit, but if your child has a poor academic fit, it makes those rare activities that actually challenge them that much more essential.

I have done the battles with oldest and am still in the battles with youngest. What I have learned is that some of the fight is related to maturity and some to drive.
My son did well but was too immature at the beginning and lacked drive. Now he is older (12yr/6th grade) and in middle school. The drive to compete with classmates in band and orchestra has started. He wants to do well and now there are no fights to make him practice and do his best. He plays violin (first chair), trumpet, and recently started the electric guitar.

My daughter, 9yr/4th grade, plays piano, violin, and flute. She has not hit the competition phase yet at school, however, she is more mature in some ways then he was at her age and a perfectionist. While she fights me to begin practice each night, once she starts what drives her is her own need play perfectly.

Just in case you are wondering...our school district provides weekly group lessons in a string and/or wind instrument. We pay privately for our children to take private lessons in 1 instrument of their choice. My son took private violin lessons for 3 yrs and has chosen to switch to electric guitar recently. My daughter started private piano lessons 2.5 yrs ago.

Perhaps his teacher could give him a recording of it so that he can hear it and know if he is practicing it wrong?