Resisting Practice
This article is part of a series on Grade School students and music. You can read the other posts here on Practicing music, Practice Strategies for ADHD, and parent involvement in practice.
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If your child is resisting practice at home, you may be worried that they don’t want to keep learning their instrument. It may seem like a sign that they don’t want to continue lessons. While that may be true for some students, if your child likes other parts of playing their instrument: going to lessons, playing with other students, and recitals for example, that likely isn’t the case.
Learning to practice and learning to play an instrument are two distinct skills.
Your child can love to play their instrument and dislike practice at the same time.
They can resist practice everyday but still love to play their instrument.
Practice is a discipline and it takes a lot of mental energy.
Practice is a learned skill.
If we say to our children “go practice” they don’t even know what that is.
At least until we’ve taught them how.
I hear questions from parents all the time asking if they should stop taking lessons because their child doesn’t want to practice unless they remind them, or because they are resistant to getting started practicing.
This is normal.
Nearly every student I have ever taught has gone through this.
Sometimes I still go through it today, and I know many other professionals do too.
Life is busy, we have a lot to do and a lot vying for our attention and getting started is hard.
We love to play but we don’t always love to practice.
It’s also important to know that starting practice without a reminder is more a function of personality and being a self-starter at things in general, than an expression of loving music.
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