. Is resisting practice bad behavior? Maybe . . . sometimes. What many parents may not realize is that many professionals struggle with the same thing. We may not insist we need to use the bathroom, are dying of thirst, or are suddenly starving as soon as it’s time to start, but we still sometimes feel that internal pull of knowing we should practice and feeling resistance to getting started. We learn to work through it and practice anyway but…
Classroom teachers think carefully about how they move from one activity to another. Without giving the topic any thought lots of time can be lost re-grouping and getting focus back on learning or the activity/subject at hand.
When I teach early childhood music classes the transition between each activity in class is what holds the class’ attention and focus. It is done very carefully so that the class keeps moving along without losing anyone along the way.
How do you transition into practice in your house?
Are you giving thought to how practice gets started?
Does it take a long time for your child to get into the groove of practice and get going on actual practice?
If so, there is likely something that can be done with the transition INTO practice that will help it start out more smoothly.
Last month I had the pleasure of presenting research about the real life ups and downs of parent-child practice at the International Research Symposium on Talent Education ( http://www.irste.org/) in Minneapolis.
This research will be part of a resource about about practice that I am just starting to work on. Because the project that will take awhile to be published, I want to share the results for those who could not attend the Symposium.
After I wrote Beyond the Music Lesson last year, I had many follow up questions from parents about specific challenges they were having with their children while practicing. It became clear that the topic of parent-child practice should be my next focus area.
To address issues that parents were struggling with, I wanted to find information beyond my own experience practicing with my children and the experiences of families I work with in my studio.
I knew how hard it was for me to practice with my daughters, and I saw that families I work with often had similar struggles. But, I didn’t want to assume that everyone’s struggles were the same so I set out to find out from a bigger group of parents what it was really like to practice with their children.
My research was gathered by a google form with 10 questions total. Over 100 parents participated.
The form was distributed to parents through their teachers, the SAA discussion boards, and Suzuki parenting groups online. The truth is: those that came across the form and took the time to answer were likely very committed parents or they wouldn’t have encountered, or taken time to fill out, the form in the first place.
I think it’s fair to say that this research shows what it’s really like for dedicated and committed parents to practice with their children.
The graph above shows the breakdown of student ages at the time parents participated in this research survey. You can see there are college age students, for which parents were reflecting back on their time practicing, a group in the 2-4 year old range, and everything in between.
The worst feeling for both students and teachers is coming back to lessons in the fall when there has been little to no practice over the summer months. Just like students need to make time to read over the summer, so they don't lose important skills before the next school year, practicing an instrument is a year round activity. Lessons maybe less regular, and there may be interruptions because of travel but regularly getting the instrument out, every day possible,…
Rushing: It's a common problem with music students. How do we get them to slow down enough to play well? How do we get them to stop rushing without nagging over and over again? Here are a few suggestions that work for my students: 1. Ed Sprunger suggests students walk to the beat of their piece while playing in his book Helping Parents Practice I have found this to be really effective when students are practicing review pieces. They can…
Daily practice with our children as they are learning to play an instrument can be an intense experience.
For many families, it is the most challenging part of learning an instrument.
No one wants to fight with their child over practice every day.
As both a teacher and parent I have learned this important lesson over the years: It is your child’s job to practice, but as parents we have a unique impact on the practice environment and on our child’s developing sense of what it means to practice.
You can’t control your child’s mood, or their willingness to be cooperative on any given day.
But, you can observe what helps your child get started practicing more easily and what factors influence them having a calm and productive practice session.
You can take note of what made a particularly great practice work for your child, and help re-create that on a daily basis.
Over my last nineteen years of teaching I have had countless conversations with parents about how to improve practice with their children. I’ve helped many parents turn around practice sessions that were filled with arguments and conflict and made them wonder if learning an instrument was worth it.
Lately I have been thinking about how to more clearly help parents through this process. I’ve narrowed it down to a checklist of five questions that parents should ask themselves after each practice as they are working to improve the process with their child.
You can find my complete guide to this process available HERE 
I am a huge fan of Gretchen Rubin’s work, especially her newest book all about the Four Tendencies. If you’re not familiar with this idea, this is the author’s framework to explain the four ways people respond to expectations placed on them, either by themselves or others.
Once I realized what my own tendency was, according to Gretchen Rubin’s definitions, it made a huge difference in how I was able to work with myself to meet my own goals and to understand my reaction to the expectations others placed on me.
For musicians, there are all sorts of expectations we encounter from teachers, parents, conductors, and from ourselves.
Understanding how we naturally respond, and how we can work with themselves to reach goals, and requirements we must meet, is a huge advantage. It helps us in music and every other area of our lives too.
It can be hard to know how to support our teens once they are old enough to practice on their own. They may seem like they don’t need us, as their parents, to be involved anymore. What I found, after parenting two teens, is that they actually need our support more than ever. It just may look different than how we supported them when they were younger.
It’s easy to focus on areas where our teens need to improve, and where they still need to grow and mature. It’s harder, but even more important to notice the areas where they are doing amazing things and point them out to our children over and over. Your teen may not always remember exactly what you said, but they will remember the feeling of being supported. Every single kid needs that in their lives, and not just for music.
Middle school is both a wonderful age and a challenging age.
In my parent talks, I always start talking about this age group by saying:
Never before has your child needed more positivity and encouragement, and never before has it been so hard challenging to do so.
This isn’t true for every child, all the time. But in general, this is the age where students start to strive more for independence. They also start to become more concerned with what their peers think (rather than their parents).
This is a normal part of their development. Rather than be offended at these changes, we can work with where they are developmentally.
For further reading I recommend reading this article about how to motivate middle school students http://www.teachhub.com/how-motivate-students-tips-middle-schoolers
If parents and their children are arguing about practice at home at this age, I encourage parents to let me know right away. I think it is wise to let the teacher be the one who delivers constructive feedback. As a parent, I encourage you to stick to positive and supportive comments. Your relationship with your child is more important than a perfect practice session.
It’s fun to learn new music. It’s fun to play in a group. It’s fun to perform and get applause from an audience. It’s not necessarily fun to practice every day. Its hard work( with fun as a reward as skills grow).
Fun should be the outcome of doing the work, if we expect the work to be fun we are more likely to give up.
Learning to practice is it’s own skill. It can look really different from one student to another depending on their age, unique learning style, and level of playing.
If your child likes their instrument and doesn’t really like to practice – you are in good company! It doesn’t mean they don’t want to play their instrument. Practice is a discipline that students learn little by little, by trial and error, and with feedback from their teacher. It’s a skill to be developed over time for sure.