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| Bryn White, in 2011 scholarship concert |
Here is some more practical advice from Cynthia Richards' book How to get your child to practise ... without resorting to violence.
The earlier article gave suggestions for making it easy for your child to practise.
Here are twelve stumbling blocks which can make things harder than they need to be:
1 Indifferent home environment
2 Faulty teacher-child relationship
3 Lack of maturity and commitment in the child
4 The wrong instrument
5 Unfavourable practice conditions
6 Bad memories
7 Peer pressure not to practise
8 Not proficient enough to be competitive
9 Too many conflicting interests
10 Sibling rivalry
11 Competitive feelings with a parent
12 Communications
Some of these things can be tinkered with, to give your child every opportunity to enjoy practising. Can you see something you could do that might help your budding musician?
What would you add to the list?
By "the wrong instrument" do you mean a different instrument altogether or a really bad instrument? Not enough parents realize that practicing on a bad instrument (a cheap keyboard, for example) is ultimately self-defeating. Technique can't develop, lessons get frustrating, and the list goes on....
ReplyDeleteHi LaDona. I think that Cynthia Richards means an instrument that doesn't suit the child. I don't have my own copy of the book. Read it at my sister-in-law's many Christmases ago.
ReplyDeleteBut I certainly agree with your point about having a decent instrument to play on.
When people advertise "Cheap piano: suit beginner" I think that's a bit like
"Large dog for sale. Will eat anything. Very fond of children!"