POSITIVE PRACTICING TOGETHER

As your child’s at-home practice partner, your support is integral to their development as a musician. But, some of the things we naturally want to do or think we should be doing can actually make practice more difficult for the child and even create conflict in the parent/child relationship. No one wants that!

Edmund Sprunger, a psychoanalyst, social worker, Suzuki violin teacher, and author (Helping Parents Practice: Ideas for Making it Easier), has a rather mind-blowing observation about kids and parents practicing (or doing homework, etc) together. This is paraphrased from a teacher workshop I attended last year:

When children are practicing, they don’t need a teacher, they need a parent/supporter. Your job during practice is not to teach them, but to help them tolerate practice. 🤯

Kids work in a different way with a parent than with a teacher. With a parent, their main concern is that we still love them. Certain things parents may do or say in a practice/homework session when we are trying to “teach” them can make them feel insecure in this (however illogical it seems to us) and cause them to act out, shut down, etc.

Our job as parents is not to point out and fix their mistakes, but to help them through the hard feelings that arise with having to work hard to make something happen, so that they can experience the great feelings that come from working hard and growing from it.

Things to AVOID:

• “Saving” them by jumping in with the right note/direction, etc. if they hesitate or make an error
• Criticizing — even if it’s intended as “constructive”
• Routinely giving empty, value-laden, or non-specific praise

Things to DO MORE OF:

• Let them struggle (within reason). This is where the learning happens! It will help your child build confidence and independence. If they don’t know a note, you can encourage them to use strategies from their tool kit to problem solve
• Point out positive things that you noticed about how they played something, and encourage them to repeat what works
• Give specific and non-valued feedback (ex. “I noticed you remembered to keep your fingers curved and strong while you played that” or “It seems like it is getting easier for you to play the notes in that section.”
• Encourage your child to reflect on their own learning with guiding questions: “What feels easy/hard about _______ right now?”

            “What are you going to/did you focus on when you play/ed it?”
            “Are you happy with how that sounded?”
          “What would you like to do the same/differently the next time you play it?” etc

• ❤️Let them know how much you love hearing them play❤️
• Schedule practice time into the weekly routine and, for younger children especially, be with them during practice.
• Make recordings of their pieces accessible for regular listening (passive listening is OK, too — in the background while they are doing something else)

MOTIVATORS:
Practice itself isn’t usually “fun,” but it certainly leads to fun. Once your child gains some proficiency on their instrument, it opens up a whole new world of creative opportunity!

• Inspiration: Listening to and watching more advanced players can be motivating, especially when you point out how much these players have practiced to achieve that level of playing. ;-)
• Elements of practicing can be made fun by incorporating games or challenges for things like repetition practice or review. I will suggest some ideas if you feel your child is reluctant.
• *Regular review — If you were learning a new skill, do you think it would be easier to practice this skill while playing something you are already familiar with or with something that is completely new and challenging?
• Helps to consolidate learning — if everything is novel, all the time, learning doesn’t get a chance to “stick.”
• Confidence builder — when a student has pieces in their personal repertoire and knows them well, it helps them believe that they can learn new material
• “Use it or lose it” — in order to keep mastered songs “in our fingers” we have to play through them every once in a while. This is why a rotation of review songs is important. No one wants to be back at square one when looking at a review piece.
• Songs your child has mastered can be used to practice new skills: rounding fingers, wrist position, different articulations, dynamics, playing at different speeds, etc. Because they already know the notes and rhythms, they can focus on the new skill and really start to develop it.
• Routine:  if practice becomes part of the daily routine in your household, it might be less of a battle to get started. It might also help to schedule practice time before free-time or screen-time. Consistency in practice helps build confidence, because it keeps learned skills sharp and helps students remember and develop new information/skills between lessons.  
• Listening: Learning music is learning a new language. We first learn to speak by hearing a language modelled for us by those who are proficient speakers. The more we hear it, the more familiar we get with the sound, tone, conventions, etc. It’s the same with music. Repeated listening to performances of the songs you are learning/will learn helps to create a kind of recording in your head with which you can play along, helping immensely with things like keeping a steady beat and adding expression. Listening to diverse professional performances on the piano will help students internalize what musical playing sounds like. We are so fortunate to have a world of amazing performances right at our fingertips with the Internet.