Piano Lessons WWYD?

[bedheadz]

I posted that ds is enjoying his lesson which he is BUT his piano teacher pulled oH last week and basically said that ds spends about twenty-five mins messing about and only five mins playing so he felt like he was taking our money for nothing.

I sat in on his lesson this week (teacher asked me to). Socially ds either totally ignores people or if he feels like he knows someone he can be very inappropriate, for example wrestling with his HT, he kept on trying to wrestle with his teacher who confirmed that he has been doing this in his lesson. I have spoke to ds and I am quite confident that he won't do it again. He finds it difficult to sit still for very long so was up and down insisting that after he played something that the teacher takes his turn to play something. He also had a running commentary of what some might consider unusual things for a 7 yr old, we are used to it but obviously he isn't.

At the end of the lesson ds went to oh in the car and the teacher was speaking to me. Basically ds complains in the lesson he is bored but if he finding something hard this is what he does (perfectionist). I was explaining that this is just his nature and it was just going to be a case of perseverance until he had picked the basics up and felt confident. His teacher said I feel like he has a real talent but if he isn't enjoying it it isn't a problem for you to cancel his lessons. I am now unsure if his teacher was trying to tell me that HE doesn't want to teach ds. I am honestly not bothered if it takes him all year to learn how to play twinkle twinkle, I am not expecting a concert pianist, he loves music and I just want to enable him to express himself and improve his fine motor skills.

WWYD?

Find a different teacher - this sounds like a piss-poor way of saying he doesn't want to teach your son.

How does your son get on with practising at home? And is he better in group activities than one-on-one? Because there might be better ways of teaching him.

Maybe piano isn't the right instrument, BTW, maybe a more physical one, such as percussion, or even a wind instrument might be better, maybe even cello (harder to mess around when you have a lumbering great chunk of wood between your thights!)

I loved music lessons eventually as a child, and played to a very high standard, but it took me three instruments and several different teachers to find the right combo, without having SN to content with, its tough at the easiest of times, so you have my sympathy.

I don't think the teacher was telling you he wanted to stop. If he'd meant that 7yo is young enough to say that they're not ready to begin now bring him back in a year. I think it's fair enough to let you know how he's behaving so you are aware. I think you'd be right to be indignant if they took money off you for a year and then said this.

I'm a bit surprised he's taking him for 30 minutes though, dd1's teacher only usually does 20 minutes for that age because she says they can't concentrate for that long productively on something as hard as the piano. Would 2x 15 minutes work better for him.

Does he practice at home well? Dh (who plays v. well) says the practice is what brings you on quicker, so as a basic rule of thumb more practice=more improvement.

OP - DeWe is right in that practice is really key for an instrument, and, tbh, I don't think (apart from the wrestling!) that your DSs behaviour in the lessons is actually that unusual for a young beginner who doesn't have technical skill yet so feels bored (ie frustrated) that what they want to be able to do and what they can actually do aren't the same thing.

If its about a love of music - how about singing classes instead? Really good fun, superb for building music appreciation, no instrument cost and easy for most to be able to "do" a whole piece of some competence.

we were looking into lesson for ds (asd) we have acoustic and electric guitars at home and piano but ds has never shown any interest, i watched a prog a while back of a dc with sen and they said drums was good as you cant actually play wrong self expressions the key to playing and they can get rid of pent up anger and its good exercise so im looking into it, have to get those ear defenders for all of us i think (wink)