How to make it difficult for your child to practise

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?

How To Get Your Child To Practise

Cynthia Richards' How To Get Your Child To Practise ... without resorting to violence is an excellent book, well worth your time, but - it's out of print!

Aren't you lucky I can pass on Mrs Richards' handy tips? I read this book at my sister-in-law's place. She is also a music teacher.

Today I am passing on the positive points, but in my next post, I will tell you what she tells you not to do. The tips have all been tested by Cynthia, who is a parent and music teacher herself.

1 Start early
2 Practise with your child every day
3 Set up family rules for practising
4 Use incentives when needed
5 Handle conflicts by

a avoiding emotional involvement
b being friendly
c being matter of fact
d not giving in

6 Enjoy your children's music
7 Praise them for their successes
8 Look for stumbling blocks and do your best to remove them
9 Focus your efforts on getting your child hooked on music

If you chew over this advice, one point at a time, you will find it will help you in parenting generally, as well as in getting your child to practise.

I'd love to know what you think about these tips. Have you tried any of them yourself?

Who is the cool dude playing the flute? If you know, please tell me and I'll credit him properly. I know he was playing at Open Day, but i didn't get his name.

How to ensure your kids don't practise

Mum, I can't find my music book...

One way to ensure your kids don't practise is to make it impossible for them to find their instrument! You could follow the method above, but it can also be done by being too tidy. Eusebius will never fall into the latter category; just ask Mrs E.

But it has been done. One parent used to carefully pack away the keyboard in its original wrapping and put it on top of the cupboard after use. And another family kept the sheet music on a high shelf where their child couldn't see it.

Can you think of any other creative ways to stop your kids practising?

Alternatively, you might reverse this and think of ways to encourage them!

Crazy ... but it works.

Mean Malin, performing in the 2009 US air guitar championship

Ever tried practising away from your instrument? Sound silly? Did you know that most great performers do it, and find it to be very effective?

 Amazing Canadian pianist, Angela Hewitt, does it when travelling, and says she can practise for longer when she hasn't got her piano there to distract her!

Robert Maddocks has a great story about an

experiment where a group of ordinary people are tested on their ability to shoot free throws in basketball. There are three groups of people, all inexperienced at the game of basketball. They are all tested at the beginning of the experiment to see how many free throws they can get. They are then separated into 3 groups. Group A is set up to practice shooting hoops for a half an hour everyday. Group B is not allowed to practice at all. And, Group C is instructed to 'imagine' shooting hoops for half an hour everyday. The results were surprising. Group A scored the same or worst. Group B scored slightly better than their initial score. Most surprising was the fact that Group C had the greatest increase of shots scored.

However, this is not going to work as your only form of practice! And I understand that it doesn't work so well for singers. When Joan Sutherland tried it, she discovered that every time she gave it a try, her voice kept coming along, too!

Please let us know if you have found this to be a useful form of practice.