You know, long before I started teaching parents how to teach their kids to play the piano, I used to help out in my mother’s studio as well as my aunt’s piano studio as a teenager. 

There I used to teach kids of all ages on a one on one basis and I met hundreds and hundreds of piano parents over the years. 

As an educational psychology enthusiast I used to observe the parents, their knowledge of music, their involvement in their kids music education and the corresponding success or failure rate of the kids. 

Over the years, I gathered so much of information through my analysis that I could almost predict the outcomes and say who would continue on with their music education and who wouldn’t and what that would be predicated on. 

So, today I thought I should go more into depth and draw on that experience to help you increase your child’s success rate when taking offline music classes. 

Now, let’s get started. 

Create Good Habits

Most of the kids that continued on with their piano classes, were those with parents who helped them, supported them and even nagged them to develop good habits. 

Habits like practicing for a short while every single day. 

Practicing and reviewing what they learned previously, before showing up to the next class, and most importantly helping the kids stay consistent. 

That means, practicing for 10 minutes each day, instead of practicing for 3 hours once a month. 

Supplement Learning

In those days there was no online learning with which offline learning could be supplemented.

However, many of the successful piano parents I knew often supplemented the kids learning, by ensuring that they focused on music theory, read books on music history and basically added music into their daily lives, not simply at the twice weekly music class. 

Celebrate Victories

The piano parents with kids that continued on over the years even when the going got tough, were the ones who often celebrated their children’s victories even though those victories were really small.

This motivated the kids and helped them to stay the course. 

Ensure All Learning Styles Were Engaged

This one was more on my mom and aunt rather than the parents themselves. However, I will include it here. In our piano studios, we ensured that kids saw what they played, played what the heard and heard what they saw. 

Which means they were able to read music notes well, and could read and write music and thus were able to engage all senses. This in turn helped visual, auditory and kinesthetic learners to stay engaged, because we catered to all the different learning styles. 

So what can you learn from this? 

Ensure that you know what your child’s learning style is and make sure that the piano studio she learns at, is aware of the style and is able to engage her in a meaningful manner. 

Focus On Progress

Again, at the time when I was teaching in my mom’s studio I had never heard of Carol Dweck or the growth mindset, but I did observe that kids’ whose parents were not hyper focused on perfection were often the ones who succeeded. 

And today I know why, and I still continue to see with my own kids and with my students that those with a growth mindset, who accept progress over perfection are the ones who are more resilient and able to trudge along even when learning plateaus. 

Became Involved And Learned Music Themselves

I saved what I believed was the most important point for the last. An overwhelming number of parents whose kids succeeded at piano were those that hadn’t had any formal musical training themselves, but yet, were super involved in their kids learning and learned to play the piano themselves. No, they didn’t actually become my aunt’s or my mom’s students, but rather they learned along with their kids and helped them along or had their kids help them and thus, found a lot of enjoyment in it. 

What do you think? Do you think you can do any or all of the above with your kids to ensure that they stick with piano lessons in the long term? 

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