Teens | Christine Goodner: The Suzuki Triangle Blog, Author, Speaker, Podcaster

How Musicians Can Use Gretchen Rubin’s Four Tendencies to Accomplish Their Goals

This post is part of a series on the blog about helping teens succeed in music. You can read last week’s article about 20 Ways to Encourage Your Teen in Music 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.

The link to take Gretchen Rubin’s Four Tendency Quiz is HERE

Based on Gretchen Rubin’s great book on the subject I want to share each tendency and some ideas for musicians to work with their tendency to meet their musical goals.

20 Ways to Support Your Teen in Music

For some ideas to help teens who are struggling to practice because of too much homework – you can read my article: Teens, Practice & Too Much Homework

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.

Here are 10 Positive Things to Say to Support Your Teen

I’m proud of you.
I love hearing you play.
I can see how hard you’re working.
Growing up is hard.
You’re still learning – it will get easier.
I’m so impressed you are making time to keep playing.
Your dedication inspires me.
How can I help?
It takes a lot guts to get up there and play.
I can see you improving.

Why Conferences with Teens Are So Important

Last Week's Blog post discussed why every studio should hold Parent-Teacher Conferences - you can read the article HERE. This week I want to address the importance of holding conferences with teens. In my studio I use part of a lesson each spring (this is happening in the next couple of weeks in my studio) to have a conference with each teen student on their own to honestly talk about how things are going, what they are enjoying and struggling…

Teens, Practice & Too Much Homework

I am in the midst of parent - teacher conferences in my studio, and the issue of fitting in practice when there is too much homework has come up a few times already. I have some thoughts to share with my students and thought others may benefit from hearing them as well. A number of my middle school students go to a very high caliber private school where 3 hours of homework a night is the norm (we could have…