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

If I let my kid choose everything for himself (@ age 8), he'd eat nothing but ice cream, pizza and chocolate, and he'd be wildly successful at video games. And he'd likely never brush his teeth... or bathe.

Perhaps one difference in my approach is that I don't consider piano to be an extra-curricular activity at all. It is very curricular in my book.

So... he is required to eat all sorts of vegetables, brush his teeth, limit sweets, bathe regularly, and do his homework... and practice piano.

Joining the band at school, however, was entirely up to him, as was the choice of instrument (other than forbidding violin -- sorry!). Practicing for that class was his responsibility, and I did not impose myself in any way. I thought this was a good compromise, again showing myself to be a kind and benevolent dictator. (Ditto for tennis and kung-fu.)

Others have said it, I will agree: let the problem-solving take place between the piano teacher and the child. You can identify problems that you see in home practice and in motivation by way of letting the teacher know what's going on, but then leave it. If the teacher is any good, they will find solutions. And if not, you might find a different teacher who motivates your child.

The fast practicing, for instance, may be easily solved if the teacher gives the child a metronome and tells him how fast to practice. It will almost undoubtedly not be solved by parental hovering.

I agree with prev posters: forcing him will guarantee that he hates it forever. IMHO it would be better to change teachers, change approach, change instrument, change to social music-making rather than solo-- anything rather than turn him off to an entire art form.

DeeDee

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."

Dandy, just saw this after my previous post. This is how I feel as well. But I am willing to re-think it as circumstances change. I am in the process of re-thinking now. As someone else pointed out (I've gotten some very good advice here), he may learn persistance better by doing something where there is a specific goal - like get good grades to get into school. So I'm willing to give up the piano if we need to. But I have no problem forcing my kids to go to school and I think it's reasonable to put piano in the same category.

JS, I do remember that at 8, my daughters (both took piano at that age) did require a lot of "mom help" just to make any progress at all in practicing. And I, too, am a single working mom. I know you are reluctant to quit... but I have to say that I was as relieved as they were when the piano lessons and daily practice were gone from our lives. I didn't realize how much stress it was adding for everyone until it was gone. I now really value activities where someone besides me does the coaching and pushing, or that they can pursue with less daily supervision It had become a forced march. In pursuit of a worthy goal, but in the end it was not worth it for us.

Regarding persistence on a goal... I have to say, I don't think transferring pressure to his grades is very realistic at this point (not sure if that is what you are saying, I am just reading your last paragraph above). This is what you care about, not what he cares about. Heck, my 15 year old isn't entirely on board with it all the time, and you will likely just trade one frustrating battle for another. Not saying you shouldn't have some expectations there, but don't expect it to be a lesson in getting something he wants through persistence. It will likely be another exercise in getting what you want. There is a lot to be said for letting HIM pick an activity -- a sport, a musical instrument of his choosing, acting, a science activity, etc. Then you will have better luck with the persistence lesson, I think.

One other thing to note. The activities that my D loves, is passionate about, and excels at are NOT activities she was doing at 8 years old for the most part. They have so many new opportunities to try out new things in middle school and high school. It is not a crisis for an eight year old to not have a deep passion and skill yet. If he is 15 and not latching on to something, then worry. D's current loves are biology and Quiz Bowl. She does other extracurricular activities (Latin, choir, drawing/painting, fencing, tons of reading). She was doing almost none of these things at 8 (she had started choir then, and always loved to read). But she is now VERY good at the things she is passionate about. So there is plenty of time for an eight year old.

I think knowing when a kid hates an activity and knowing when a kid hates the boring part of an activity can be difficult to sort out. I didn't like practicing piano as a kid, but I do think it was useful to study for years and learn to work at something that didn't come easily when so many other things came so easily. DH was allowed to quit piano after a few years and he's always regretted it. There were times when I cried while practicing as a kid but those times were rough patches. I am grateful that I didn't give up the first time I ever had a bad day of practice.

JaneSmith -- I think you have to figure out whether your son hates piano or he hates practicing so much at 8 or whether he resists all efforts to do an activity with consistency and perseverance or whether he hates your involvement with his practice. If he hates piano, then you may be teaching him to fear trying things, to think of extracurriculars as a power struggle, and to resent your interest in his development. If he just hates practice during a rough patch but loves piano generally, then working through that can provide valuable lessons in learning to persevere through struggle. It may be difficult to sort out once there's an element of power struggle involved.

My approach to music practice has been that it is required as long as I'm paying for lessons, but I have no other involvement. How effective the time is used, how much is accomplished, or what is done during practice is between the kid and the teacher. We sometimes use some additional requirement -- that practice is done before x activity or before a certain time of day -- but otherwise the kid is in charge of practice. As my kids have developed and had better teachers, the requirements have increased from the teacher which allows me to have no input. The kids don't want to disappoint their teachers and thus work hard.

My DD9 played two different instruments for a few years. She asked to quit this fall. We talked about it and she'd waffle back and forth from wanting to do it or wanting to quit. We'd encourage her and she'd get interested again. After a few months, she definitely wanted to quit. She came to me, told me that she was learning to work hard and persevere in many other activities and that she wasn't going to develop any love for her instrument. She argued that she had enough to exposure to music to know she didn't want to invest years more doing it. I agreed with her and she quit.

For me, this is a complicated question. It can be very easy for kids to resent doing anything without the immediate payback of video games and I think part of my job as a parent is to show my kids that sometimes, work takes a long time to pay off. At the same time, forcing a kid to do a hated activity for years seems really silly to me. No matter how much talent a kid has, high levels of achievement require a great deal of work and most kids who detest an activity will never put in that work so there's not much hope for payoff in either achievement or enjoyment.

His breaks never came about after any particular battle -- or in response to complaints. He'd develop a sharp Pavlovian response if I ever allowed that. Instead, they typically came naturally after a build-up in preparation for a performance, or in conjunction with a school vacation. (Or both, as with our current break.) I always made it a point to tie the break to his hard preparatory work, even when the end-result was not his best possible performance.

Sorry the break in November didn't yield positive results for you. I'd try another one, though, or reduce frequency & duration of practice.

This sounds very familiar. I think part of my reluctance to quit is that the activities available to them when they were younger were not challenging enough. But now that they are older, these might make more sense. Its also appealing to think about the time we could spend on special projects. Again, I am not going to rush into any decisions right now, but this is good to hear.

Fwiw what I liked about Dandy's scheduled breaks is that they were regularly scheduled. They're not in response to. They can look forward to knowing they're going to get a frequent break. But it's not like the star chart and skittles that they can try to work hard and take a mile. You're trying to carve out a comfortable rut, right. Also fwiw you're not wrong at all to feel hurt by certain posts, but I believe their intention was good and they were just sharing what they discovered work well in their own lives and worked well for their family. I like how you politely said you felt that it was mean spirited. You handled your response quite well. Also Fwiw I applaud your bravery in reaching out for advice and companionship in this vulnerable state.

You are right that Suzuki does require parental involvement--which is one of the reasons we avoided it here (ETA: I don't mean that Suzuki is bad, not at all, I just know myself well enough to know that that could have been a problem for me personally). I am a professional musician, and music is important enough to me that I wanted not to be inserted in between my kids and their experience of music. I was really happy that when my lads decided they'd like to have some lessons, they chose instruments (strings, brass) I don't play, and styles (blues, bluegrass, Celtic) far from that which I play, too. That way, what they are doing belongs to them, which I love--and we have fabulous spontaneous jam sessions! I also like that they have good collaborative relationships with other adults, and that I am very much on the sideline with regard to those relationships.

If your son were interested, could he explore some other styles--maybe jazz, and learn a little about improv?--or early music (he could be the only sackbut or krummhorn player in his whole school!), or some kind of world music (explore the music of a country he finds particularly fascinating?), or fife-and-drum music (and maybe get together with re-enactors)? Are there some teachers around your location who might have expertise in these areas?

The best thing of all, if he wants to, might be singing--I think part of the problem with practising many other instruments, and certainly piano, is that you are tied to a single physical location, and kids need to move--the voice is our first and best and most portable instrument, and is uniquely our own, in a very personal and wonderful way. Singing is a great way to reconnect with the joy and fun that should be part of all music-making.

Hope that helps a little--

peace
minnie