Thanks. I read the link. It was really interesting. It has similarities to the Suzuki method in that children learn to play by ear, rather than by reading music. I only found out recently how different this is from conventional piano teaching. The thing I like about Suzuki is his notion that any child can have ‘talent’, and that learning the piano can be a way of developing other qualities of patience, perseverance, self-discipline etc. If you’re interested in this kind of thing his main book is called Nutured by Love (I think).
Many thanks. That’s very helpful.
I went through the Yamaha system as a 5yo for about 3 years before my family immigrated to NZ (this was back in the 80s). Like most Taiwanese music was encouraged into our lives.I was bribed with a trip to the local bakery after wards haha. While it didn’t suit some of my peers some (i.e. me) really benefited from it. I moved onto classical guitar which I dropped after 2 years and then the violin which I played throughout high school.
I believe a healthy balance between sports and music can be very beneficial in a child’s education. I was a mediocre musician and loved my sports so it worked out well for me.
I am 28 now and play whenever I can, I’ve recently started playing the Leehom and Jay Chou songs…apparently the chicks dig it haha
Well, it’s now been almost 2 years since we started Yamaha and there’s been a dramatic improvement in the past month – since we bought a real piano. Previously we used a cheap electric piano at home and it sufficed, and we both enjoyed screwing around on it playing trumpet, banjo and drums, etc. (as well as piano), but it was getting harder to motivate her to sit down daily and practice. . . all of her songs. . . sufficiently. But now that we’ve got a real piano she seems much more eager to sit down, of her own initiative, and play a good session.
Part of her motivation also comes from me playing. I’m only a beginner myself, but I’m the one who sits beside her in all the classes and I try to practice the same songs she’s doing most days. And she can be pretty competitive about a lot of things, so when she sees/hears that I’m not just sitting at “her” piano, but playing “her” songs better than her, she’ll come over and pace beside me, eager for her turn to sit down and give it a whirl. 
Some day we’ll start private lessons, but I’m still happy with the group yamaha classes for now. She’s been with the same 4 or 5 kids for over a year, they like each other, she loves the class, and while it’s a little broad and general at times (not just piano instruction, but tone, pitch, rhythm, etc.) I feel it’s giving her a good sound musical base. And, she likes it and is getting better at piano. So I don’t want to mess with something that’s working and force her to submit to serious 1-on-1 instruction that she might hate and might destroy the good thing we’ve got going.
How about you? How are the lessons going for your kid/s?
So, anyone else struggling through kids’ piano lessons?
It’s been three years at Yamaha for us now and our girl’s getting pretty good, I think, but like 99% of all piano students, but she’s not always eager to practice (though sometimes once she gets started she clearly seems to be enjoying herself and can end up playing longer than one might’ve guessed at the start of the session). I suspect that’s almost always the case. In fact, I am clearly reminded of when I was in junior high and taking piano lessons and failed to practice regularly so my dad said, “fine, if he doesn’t want to practice then we’ll stop paying for lessons,” so they did and today, to my regret, I can barely play the piano at all.
My wife, while she’s no Amy Chua (and never played any musical instruments), has taken it upon herself to ensure that our girl practices regularly and seriously. She’ll be walking past the piano en route to another room, as our girl is doing her songs, and she’ll go “Ohhhhh,” in disappointment as the girl misses a note or skips carelessly through a song. And she’ll then stand behind her shoulder watching, listening, and chattering away telling her this is too slow, that’s too fast, how come you’re not taking it seriously, etc. Eventually, our girl will wail in emotional pain, my wife will push harder, there’ll be more wailing, till finally near the end of almost every practice session our girl will be in tears.
As I said, my wife’s no Amy Chua. We’re not talking 3-hour practice sessions. We’re only talking 20-30 minutes at least 3-4 days a week, but there’s a bad chemistry between the mother and daughter and piano. Almost every time, one can count on my wife getting upset, my girl crying, and the piano (and me) just sitting there thinking “oh, for christsake, can’t you just knock it off with the pushing and emotional crap.”
So this morning I had a talk with my wife. I told her I appreciate how hard she’s trying but suggested she completely remove herself from the piano practice, that she physically go to another room, stay out, and try to avoid listening and getting emotionally involved. I suggested I take charge of practice sessions. I can get her to sit down on the bench and I will give encouragement AND constructive criticism, but I won’t push so hard and the sessions will never end in serious emotional distress and tears (unless my wife is unable to stay away, which is a serious possibility).
Perhaps with easy-going dad in charge, our girl won’t push herself as hard, and perform as well, as she would with mom looking over her shoulder scolding her (or maybe she will – one never knows), but to me it seems critical that the tears and distress must stop.
I told our girl this morning that mom felt she wasn’t taking practice seriously enough and was thinking maybe we should drop the lessons, and I asked her how she felt about that. She was opposed. She said she wants to continue.
So I suggested my above strategy to my wife, but she’s having trouble accepting it. What if Emily doesn’t practice and she ends up embarrassing herself in a recital, she asked. Then she’ll learn she needs to practice, I replied. But, of course, foreign man never knows as well as Taiwan woman, so . . . . well, we’ll see what happens. All I know is I’d like our girl to continue but I’m tired of the tears.
How about you? Does your kid practice? On his/her own initiative? Long enough? Good enough? What’s your family’s approach?
Hi MT
My son’s been learning piano for three years now too, and we’ve had our ups and downs as well. I completely understand where your wife’s coming from. My son also sometimes gets into a rut and is just going through the motions as he practices, and it’s very frustrating as a parent to feel that all that work that they (and you!) have put in is just being wasted. If a student doesn’t try to play well as they practise, they learn the poorer standard and have to relearn how to play something really well for a performance.
I don’t know how old your daughter is, but I think it’s hard for kids to really understand this. They seem to think that if they sit down at the piano and do something then that’s good enough. They don’t appreciate how much of their learning is unconscious motor memory learning. They think that they’ll try harder when they really need to, i.e. when they’ve got a performance coming up. They don’t understand that not trying hard every time is counter-productive, and what they’re actually doing is teaching themselves how to play badly.
So from what I understand this is your wife’s problem with your daughter’s practice times, and I think that she’s quite right. However, it’s also true that complaining at and berating your daughter isn’t going to make things any better. She’ll learn to associate practice time with negative feelings, that nothing that she does will ever be good enough and that she isn’t playing for her own benefit, but in order to meet her mother’s expectations of her.
Of course there will also always be times when your daughter doesn’t feel like practising, doesn’t practise well, and everyone gets frustrated and pissed off. This is normal, and it’s a great learning experience to work through those times and to come to understand that they’re just a blip, not the end of the road. I think it’s one of the most important lessons a child can learn, to continue to work even though it’s hard and you want to give up, and that things do get better and the rewards do come eventually - a great reason for a child to start on that path of learning an instrument I think.
But it sounds in your case as though this is a worsening situation that isn’t going to get better unless there is a change in approach. I think from your own experience it’s already clear to you that offering the option to give up isn’t the solution. I hope you don’t mind me saying so but I think your parents were wrong to allow you to give up as a child. It may well have taught you a lesson many years later, but what good did it do you? I think there are times when children need to learn the ‘serves you right’ lesson, and others when adults need to understand that they have a much better long term view of a situation and that they need to prevent their children, who only have a very narrow, short term viewpoint, from making errors of judgement.
What I feel your daughter really needs here is some motivation to try harder to play well when she practices. There are a few ways that you can do this. Do you have CDs of the pieces she’s learning? She could listen to the CD then play, trying to emulate the sound on the CD. You could make a chart of the different ‘goals’ she needs to meet and get her to tick off which ones she thinks she’s achieved (I don’t know what your daughter has to focus on but for example my son’s goals might be ‘taking’, ‘balance’, ‘left hand small, right hand big’, ‘beautiful ending’). You could get some small change, put in on the left of the piano, and as she completes each piece to the required standard, she can move a coin across. Whatever she moves across she gets to keep. You could have a home concert once a week and each practice is preparing for this concert (make a big deal of it, with chairs, invitations, drinks and canapes). The idea is that you give her positive reasons to try hard, rather than punishments for not trying hard.
As I said, I completely understand where your wife is coming from, but you’re quite right too, in that she’s affecting your daughter’s desire to practice. Playing an instrument should be a pleasurable thing, even though it sometimes takes hard work. Maybe you could suggest to your wife that you take over for a week, or a month, and try some of the ideas I’ve written here, then reassess at the end as to whether your daughter’s practising is better. If she agrees that it is, maybe she’ll either be happy to let you continue to supervise it, or she’ll be more willing to encourage and reward rather than criticise. It’s very hard, though, if you’ve been brought up in that culture, to let go of those learned habits when it comes to bringing up your own children.
I’m writing a blog on helping children to learn to play the piano that may give you some more ideas than I’ve written here.
Hey, thanks for the terrific response.
No offense taken. I don’t know if they were right or wrong. I regret that I can’t play the piano. I also regret that my dad, who was born in Germany and fluent in German, didn’t teach me that along with English when I was a child. And, there are other things he did that, looking back now, may not have been the best course of action. But it’s damn hard parenting, there are lots of tough calls, and we’re all only human, doing the best we can, so I hold no grudges. I DON’T feel that him letting me quit piano taught me that one can always quit when faced with challenges (I learned perseverence and commitment through other avenues), so that’s not the consequence. Really, the only consequence is my lack of piano skills. Oh well, I’ll learn it in the next life.
Nor am I worried that our girl would learn quitting is acceptable if we just gave up now. She seems to have enough other serious obligations to teach her responsibility and perseverence. But I just don’t want to quit (because I know she’ll be thankful for learning the instrument). Nor does she.
Good idea. Actually, she does have CDs of many of her pieces and my wife mentioned this morning that we should listen to them more often BEFORE playing, for inspiration. So, I guess we shall.
Lots of other good ideas. Thanks. I agree it should be pleasurable and having each practice end in tears is potentially very harmful and counterproductive, so that’s got to stop. I look forward to reading your post more closely and your blog when I have more time.
I agree it isn’t fair to blame your parents. I just think it’s an error of judgment to allow a child too much control over certain things, purely because they lack our long perspective. Sometimes parents really do know best. My son’s wanted to give up at his lowest points. Other times he’s been jumping around the room punching the air because he’s mastered something he found difficult. I wasn’t trying to make out that your parents were bad at parenting, just that in this case allowing the child the option, even putting it on the table as part of the negotiations, is rarely a good move. It puts the possibility of giving up in the picture, rather than learning the instrument being a part of everyday life, like brushing your teeth, which is the ideal way to maintain the motivation to continue. Not sure I’m explaining myself too well here.
That’s cool.
I realised I didn’t really answer some of the questions in your first post. As I said, my son’s been learning for 3 years, since he was four and a half. He practises a full session (about 45 minutes) five days a week. He has a half hour lesson one-to-one every week, except school holidays. He also sits in on another child’s lesson and draws while he’s there. This is standard Suzuki method. On Sundays he plays his repetoire in a mini-concert and does some reading practice too.
I’m not Amy Chua either, but I do use various tactics to prompt him to play well, rather than just go through the motions, for the reasons I gave in my earlier post. These are various rewards, praise, charts, competitions, anything that will engage his interest and encourage him. Currently we’re going through a good phase and he’s trying hard and playing well. My family’s attitude is pretty good. They put up with hearing his CD over and over again (Suzuki method once more), they know not to interrupt while he’s practising, and they make an effort to praise his skill.
I wouldn’t say that my son practises on his own initative yet. I have to tell him to practice most of the time, depending on his mood and how long a day it’s been. Sometimes he’ll be quite willing, others he’ll need more persuading. But like your daughter, once he starts he’s usually fine. Very occasionally he’ll even go and practice extra if he’s learning a new piece that he really likes. I think one of the best ways to encourage a child to practice is, as I said before, to make it part and parcel of their everyday life. So setting aside a particular time of day, such as when the child comes in from school or after dinner, or after breakfast or whenever. If your girl’s practice is currently a little irregular this could explain her initial reluctance. The option of not practising is already a possible scenario in her mind. You could introduce the idea of regular practice by setting a time limit - practice every day from now on but only 15 minutes at a time. Or a reward for practising every day for a month, to set up the habit.
As you may be able to tell this is a bit of a hobby horse of mine, 
so do feel free to pm.