Practice Is About Progress Not Perfection

One of the biggest issues that I have come across when teaching music to kids of any age is the disconnect between what kids can do at the start and what they expect the experience to be like at the beginning. 

Kids often come to music having watched beautiful performances by top players and instrumentalists and have a vision of playing like that from the get go. Thus, they become very disappointed when they see how much practice it takes to gain mastery of the instrument. 

This disconnected vision, along with the constant need to practice in order to be able to move ahead, often leaves kids frustrated and that is one of the reasons the drop out rate for piano lessons is so high. 

Therefore, in this blog post I want to talk about mindset and how you can help your child get through this very difficult phase without giving up too easily. 

Practice Is About Improving

This is the first thing that you should tell your children even before they sit down to play the piano or any other instrument. Practice is not about perfection, rather it is about improvement. So if they made ten mistakes the last time around, it doesn’t mean that they should expect to not make any mistakes at all, rather making nine mistakes would be progress. 

Take It In Bite Size Pieces

Instead of practicing the entire piece of music and trying to work on the entire piece, it is best that you help your child to break it into bite size pieces. Thus, she should only practice a small piece at a time, like a single bar line. Once she has mastered that, she can then move on to the next bar of music and so on. 

Celebrate The Victories

This goes without saying, but you would be surprised at the number of parents who don’t do this. My mom included. Yes, when I was a child, my music teachers were my mom and my aunt. Neither one of them celebrated my victories, they only pointed out my mistakes. So needless to say I gave up playing the piano so many times, it is hard to even count. 

Growth Mindset

As a regular reader of my blog, you have no doubt heard about my undying love for Carol Dweck and her philosophy. If you don’t know Carol Dweck then I suggest you get acquainted with her and her teachings as soon as you can. Doing so will really help you with keeping your child from getting frustrated and giving up on her piano lessons too early. 

Celebrate The Life Skills That Are A Direct Result Of Learning To Play The Piano

Learning piano or any other musical instrument is hard and tedious, but it is also very fulfilling and will teach your child some really important life skills. Even if your child doesn’t become a master at the instrument she is learning, the life skills she would have gained through the entire process will be priceless and therefore, should be celebrated at every opportunity. So what are some of the life skills that you have to look out for? Perseverance, determination, discipline and much more, so when you see any of them, take a moment to celebrate them and tell your child how wonderful it is that she is gaining these skills in the process. 

I know being a piano parent can be a very hard thing to do. Even piano teachers themselves, find it very challenging to be good piano parents. I myself have had to struggle and learn from the mistakes my mom made, and my aunt made. And even with all that experience behind me, I’m not perfect either. So what better thing to do than to come together as a community and help each other become better piano parents. If you loved this article, don’t put it off anymore, come join my community right now.