Piano practice - what age completely leave child to it

[Potofdaffodils]

My DS (7) is working towards grade 2 in piano. Normally I suggest he practices specific sections again until he does it correctly but now I'm worried he doesn't have the personal drive. He is great practicing and will focus, but is nowhere near as efficient when I leave him to it. What age do you comeptely leave the practice up to them? Do you sit in the room and read a book and make small suggestions or is it 100% up to them?

I think 7 is very young to expect him to do focussed practice without any reminders or nudges from a parent.

My children are a lot older and I still need to remind them both to not just play through the bits they like.

I have a 10 and 12 yr old and still help them. I don't sit with them every time but once or twice a week I do sit for their whole practice session and help. Otherwise I sometimes shout to repeat certain bits. One of my DC has a teacher who makes great notes as to what they should work on and they go through those notes during their practice to know what they should be focusing on.

I'd love it if they were more self sufficient but if i leave them to it most of the time they play through stuff once and then stop!

Depends on the child.

DD is almost 14 - singing and uke I don't need to do anything at all as she's very motivated and will easily do a couple of hours a day.

Piano on the other hand... needs a blazing row before she'll do a half hearted 30 minutes. She's very good at it, but hates the exam pieces. After the current exam we are giving them up so I will be interested to see if she practices more. She has an incredibly inspirational teacher so I am hoping that helps when she's no longer stuck with whatever ABRSM think she should be playing.

At 7, I definitely sat over everything including attending lessons. I started leaving it more to her at around 11.

I left them to anything extra curricular they did from the beginning. Because I wanted to see what they actually wanted to, as opposed to doing it because they had to.

At least til they get to secondary age (11/12) and then some depending on the child.

Im a piano teacher and hardly any parents support their kids in practice. So thank you for doing it. In my opinion supportive parents are the key factor in success (except in very rare cases)

Mine still ask me to be there at 13 and 15! It’s mostly to do the tech- press buttons for backing tracks or call out scales from the app they use to generate a random selection.

but they just generally appreciate having someone around. I’m not always there and I’m not a musician and certainly am not as good at knowing if they’re right or wrong as I was (always asking if a scale was harmonic or melodic as I can’t hear it for example!)- but when you have teenagers you take all the offers to be around them that you get, I reckon.

little one is off to boarding school in September- where she’ll have plenty of people insisting she does her practice- I’ve definitely got my rosy tinted spectacles on about our practice sessions at present but I will miss being part of things.

I leave my 9 year old to practice for 15 mins on her own then sit with her for 15 mins making suggestions or helping with a bit she’s struggling with.

My parents are both musicians of a professional standard (for various reasons, neither of them is a working professional musician, though my dad was for a bit). My mum is also qualified to teach a musical instrument.

They never stood over us while we practiced (and we all started piano at about five). They might remind us before practice of weak points to be aware of, but that would be it.

We all learnt to a good standard (think grade 8 plus), though none of us have become professionals.