Music practice - if your kids do it, how do you get them to do it, if they don't, why don't you make them?

[tortoiseSHELL]

As a piano teacher I am CONSTANLY amazed at the money parents pay for piano lessons, and then don't make their children practise - thus wasting the money imo! Can't think why this is. I always thought it must be impossible to actually get them to practise, but now ds1 is doing violin and piano, I realise it isn't, you just make them do it.

So - if your children learn instruments, how much practice do you insist that they do each day, what is your method of achieving this, and if they don't practise, why don't you make them? And do you mind wasting all that money on lessons?

Thank you! This is to help me as a piano teacher, not as a parent, as atm ds1 does his practice with no problem, I need schemes for my pupils' parents! I have suggested sticker charts, rewards charts, having a set time each day, doing 5 mins 3 times a day, doing 15mins in one go...am out of ideas!

I don't agree that awards don't help.

practising when young 6/7/8 ish can be boring and you don't see the progression.

It has made a huge huge difference to my kids. Three of htem are pretty talented and doing very well. THEY had ot practice to get there BUT they also loved paying with their mates.

10 per paractice helped - this was their pocket moeny

awards rewards

I agree that rewards can help in the short term to motivate a young child who can't see the benefit at the moment. The trouble is, many parents just plug away at the music lesson thing LONG after the child should be wanting to do it for themselves. If a child is musical and wants to play, they'll do it. I agree with the posts about too many parents wanting to fulfil their dreams through their kids though - I've met loads of non musical paretns who desperately want little johhny to be a top musician.

Franny is right.

I think rewards can be good though in getting them into the habit and routine of practice - like with potty training!!!

and actually I think it is a bit unrealistic to expect the child to do it all themself. I definitely had to be 'made' to practise - although I played the piano all the time I did have to be made to do my 30 mins on my set pieces/scales etc, and it would be much more fun to go out and play tennis with my friend, or play with my toys. But a parent's role is to take a longer term view surely.

Ah, but tortoiseshell, most parents simply don't have a longer term view as far as music is concerned. If you're not musical you see music as a hobby not a profession (and to be honest, you'd be mad to encourage children into music as a career unless they showed outstanding devotion to it themselves) so there's no real point in doing more of it than you want to - especially once you've got to the stage where you can play at a level to be in a orchestra or band.

music teachers get so fed up (don't they TS) when kids don't practice. I really don't get the idea of paying for music lessons then doing nothing form week to week. No one improves and slowly the kids get demotivated and stop.

When kids can play two hands together and then pick out a tune or play Let it Be they come alive and that helps to motivate.

So any encouragement is good bribery the whole caboodle.

snorkle - by long term view, what I meant wasn't 'looking towards a career in music', I meant longer term than 'I don't want to practise, I want to play football' - the longer term view being that by the next lesson if they've done no practice, then they will find it harder. So not looking years into the future - just a realisation that the practice is part of it.

Beety - you are too right, we DO get fed up!And imo it is far worse for someone to start, not practise and give up than for them never to have started because then their mind set is that 'they have given up piano/violin/whatever' rather than it being something they can take up in the future.

It's simply a waste of money paying for lessons and not enforcing the practice in between - they just don't improve! I was trying to explain to a sports mad pupil I have about if you were training for a 100m race, you wouldn't do nothing for 6 months and then go for a 10 mile jog the night before - you'd just be tired! And not have actually done any training. Don't think it will have made any difference at all.

Ah, OK TS . For what it's worth I felt duely chastised by this thread and made ds do 30mins cello today. His scales were awful, so he will be doing extra scales practice from now until his exam (at least).

Hurrah! Scales are the WORST thing aren't they to get them to practise!

I think my dd's teacher has a unique approach! She plays the clarinet. She started when she was 9, and practiced religiously until she started secondary school this year. She is finding it really hard to find time and energy to practice. He isn't even expecting her to at the moment - they just play together during her lesson. She loves jazz, so he's found some things they can play together- it's keeping her ticking over and I think if we had insisted that she practice she would have given up by now. As it is, she looks forward to her lessons because it's a relaxing half hour that she enjoys, rather than a lesson she would worry she hasn't prepared for.

Scales are evil! Any tips for making them more fun gratefully received.

I think he sounds a great teacher, seeker - that sounds like perhaps the only way to keep her engaged at the moment. Clever chap not to make it an issue

dd (who is 8) has jsut started hoir so is up early to sing before school and afgter, she also has 35mins prep most ngihts and her piano teacher was very firm with ehr that she needed to fit in practice as well!!

She is taking her grade two this term and just has to fit it in.

AND I guess she does have to - she can practice in school some of the time but she needs to do some at home in theevenings and weekends...that is life - well her life!

I really think they need to want to do it. Honoria - yes I think we are very lucky with dd's teacher. He is a session musician, so I think he has a shightly more pragmatic approach than a lot of other teachers! Which suits me - ~I think music should be fun.

seeker, that's all very well and good, and tbh I've done that with older pupils who just want to 'play', the problem is with little ones where that would just be a non-starter because they don't have any technique to do that with, can't read music, don't know what the notes on the piano are.

tortouseshell -

maybe they aren't ready to play an instrument yet? It's not compulsory! The reason dd didn't start the clarinet til she was 9 was that I said she couldn't. I wanted to make sure it was something she really wanted - -even though I was desperate for a musical child (I was one - I wanted one of my own to play with!)It has to be child led - or what's the point?

funny you should say that seeker; apparently my dad started piano at 14; but it came from him, he loved it and I'm told had to be nagged to STOP practising. Got to grade 8 by age 18....so a good advert for it coming from the child themselves, I would say.

seeker i agree. Too many parents push their children when the child just doesnt have the interest. I know pushy parents are a nauseating thing anyway, but somehow the field of music seems to attract more than its fair share of them!

you may be right seeker, unfortunately that's not my decision to make - really up to the parents!

I think it very much depends on what age the children are.

My DD who is 9 started piano lessons last year and it was initially quite hard to get her to practise. I now sit with her for 15-30 mins a night and we play the music together, she'll play the tune and I'll do some kind of accompaniement. She is just so much more motivated to play now and it is making a huge difference in her progression.

I am no fan at all of making a child practise though - I had a huge amount of pressure on me to do so as a child and hated it. Once I found an instrument I loved playing though, there was absolutely no stopping me. I would practise most evenings for at least 2 hours - I just simply loved it. I want my own children to catch the bug for music, rather than being force fed it!

If it wasn't that you said that the worst families were the musical families then I would have wondered if it was because the parents didn't know how to help their children practice? dd is just starting the piano at school. She has been wanting to learn for ages, and understands about practice. We haven't bought her a keyboard yet - not quite sure what to buy to be honest - any ideas gratefully recived! But I do worry that when she does get going I actually won't be in a good position to help her, as although I sing quite well, I can't read music. dh also has no musical talents or training, and isn't very good at getting them to do their spelling let alone practice... Do you have a waiting list of children who want to start playing? If so then I would say to the parents of the non practicing children that unless you see some improvement you think they should stop taking lessons with you. I was forced to learn the violin as a child and it was horrible! I thought it sounded really bad, and I disliked practising intensely. After a year I managed to give up (with my teacher's support). I do think an instrument that I liked, or felt I had some choice about would have worked much better for me - my sister learnt the flute (and later the cello) passed lots of exams, travelled with the school orchestra, and as an adult doesn't play at all. If you don't do it for pleasure, then really what's the point?

interesting nooka and clandestine. I think they DO need to be made to practise early on, so they can get to the point where they can play things for fun. I had a girl who came to me in a school context, where you had to give a term's notive to give up, which she had done, but she had to do her term out with me, as I had taken over from someone who had gone off on maternity leave. I suggested we did some more 'pop' type stuff, moved on from there to doing some jazz chords, improvisation etc. She withdrew her letter asking to give up, and THEN (and this made me so proud of her) got a job in her summer holidays playing the piano in an old people's home - playing all their favourite songs!

But had she had no technique to work on, that just wouldn't have been possible.

i wonder if some of the musical parents think their child will be naturally musical and don't need to work at it, or remember their own childhood through slightly rose-tinted glasses and think they shouldn't be made to do it, as they just did their practice, or even resented being made to practise and thought they wouldn't make their children do it?

clandestine - you're exactly right that a parent sitting with the child helping can turn it into really valuable 1:1 time, which the child enjoys.

I would agree about the 1:1 too. DS2 loves if one of us sits with him, or he practises in the kitchen whislt we're cooking tea(neither of us has any musical ability).

That, of course, once he's finally got over his strop and started practising...

Prompted by this thread, we discussed the practise and he was quite positive over the weekend, and says he's going to try to practise more, so there's always hope, lol.