By Jenny Silva
We’re sure that everyone with children knows how challenging it is to motivate a child to practice. Every day there are activities that are vying for your child’s attention. Consistent and smart practice is essential to growing as a musician. The sooner your child can start to develop a regular practice regimen, the more apt they will be to succeed in their musical endeavors. Here are 10 tips to help motivate your child to practice:
1) Make practicing part of the routine – same time every day. Ideally, it should be before the fun stuff – TV time or computer games. Play with what time of day works best for you. My kids are morning kids, and so morning practice works well for us.
2) Set realistic expectations for practice time according to your child’s age. If your child is 5, don’t expect 30 minutes of practice a day. You can gradually increase the amount of time spent practicing as they get older.
3) Practice with your child. This is especially useful for younger children. Kids love extra mommy and daddy time. If you sit with your child, he or she may be much more enthusiastic.
4) Provide an audience for your child. Again, kids love the extra attention. Cheer and holler and they’ll be more excited to play!
5) Get music for your kids that they want to play. We had a really difficult time getting my son to practice until we got Star Wars. He practiced it non-stop until he had it memorized. Buy anthologies of music that your kids can browse, so they can get excited by the music. This Famous and Fun collection is great for young beginners and my kids have both found songs to play in VH1’s collection of Rock and Roll:
6) Ask your teacher to provide specific practice assignments. Sometimes it’s easier if the practice instructions come from an outside authority. And more specific tends to be better than general (i.e., “play Star Wars slow 5 times, than faster 5 times” – as opposed to “Practice for 30 minutes”)
7) Throughout the week (i.e., not when you are trying to encourage your child to practice), talk to your child about practicing and how beneficial it is. Many kids feel like if something is hard, they aren’t good at it. Remind your kids that no one is born “good”, and that you get good by practicing. It takes 10,000 hours of practice to become an expert.
8) Give lots of rewards. If your child practices without your prompting, make sure you are enthusiastically praising their efforts. We also give stars in our house that are good for Minecraft time or toy purchases (and if you don’t know Minecraft – lucky for you!)
9) Make sure to praise the effort, not the end result. There is a lot of research that supports that praising the effort is much more effective at encouraging practice than praising the result. Praising the effort rewards the attempt and encourages your child to keep trying. Praising the result builds pressure to repeat the performance, and can actually make your child anxious about practicing. They may become resistant to trying in case they can’t repeat their good performance. (This is from one of my favorite books, Mindset, by Carol Dweck).
10) Make it easy to practice. Some teachers may not approve of this, but you may not want to require your child to put away their instrument after every practice.
What are some of the things that you do to motivate your child to keep practicing?
Really enjoyed this article and will share with the parents of my students.
They need to read what others say about practice times, motivating their child and etc. Thank you… Hopefully you will share more in the future.
R. Ausbury
We’re glad to hear you enjoyed the article. Hopefully it is useful for your students and their parents!
As an adult learner, I have that found many of these techniques work for me. There are many days when the last thing I want to do is play my harp, but if I leave it uncovered, I’m more likely to play it throughout the day. Some of the other techniques I can use when I’m working with kids. Thanks for the great article!
Reblogged this on Suzanne Gilmore Muzeek Blog.
What about adult beginners? Is there some music more likely to appeal to them so they will practice?
My best piece of advice is to let the child be in control of the practice session. So many parents, in their enthusiasm to see their child succeed, start to take over the practice session and kill their child’s sense of accomplishment and ownership. Simply asking “what would you like to do first?” or “what would you like focus on for that song?” empowers children and helps them feel more responsible for their own success.
Thanks, Jenny. I re-posted this on my page at https://www.facebook.com/MarciaKWashburn?ref=hl.
Private lessons with a good teacher are also motivating because the student will improve more quickly and will have a personal guide to help them. Beginners seeking music to help them get motivated to practice should browse through sheet music online and at their local music store. The best way to make practicing fun is to play music that you like. This is true for adults too.
Great advice Rick!
I really enjoyed this article and will share with my students. I also found it true when I studied saxophone – to leave the instrument out so that it was easy to pick up and play a few minutes. I always practiced the piano more simply because it was “out”.
These are great tips! I have found that making practice fun with educational practice games is a great way to encourage success in children’s musical careers.
Cool, thanks for sharing.. I think I’ll read up more on it myself.
Sometimes, for me, getting students the music they want entails me transcribing a particular pop song for them, that involves a lot of decisions for me about trying to be true to the original melody so the students can play along with the track (key, rhythm, register, etc) or transpose the piece to an easier key and with a simplified rhythm which will enable them to play it more easily. Sometimes giving them a very difficult transcription which is clearly beyond their current abilities is an excellent motivator, and sometimes it isnt, every student is a unique individual who responds to a wide range of positive or negative reinforcements- some will rise to the challenge and work their butts off to be able to conquer the piece and some will curl up in a little tearful ball and quit. One parent came up with an excellent motivator for her daughter (who was a very commercially minded girl), she paid her $5 for every day that she practiced on her own for 30 minutes or more- but at the end of the week the child had to pay for her lesson herself. Pretty quickly the student realized that if she practiced 7 days a week she would be turning a $10 profit weekly, and promptly doubled her efforts at home. Everyone is different, and part of our job as teachers is learning what makes each pupil tick, and helping them develop good discipline which will reward them with a wealth of achievements, both in music and life. This is the way we do it at my studio, http://www.nassaubaymusiclessons.com anyway…
Reblogged this on Take Note and commented:
It’s back to school time, which means school band and orchestras are starting up again, as are private lessons after the summer holidays. It’s important to make sure your child establishes a regular practice routine early in the school year.
I really like your point about taking the time to talk to my child about how beneficial practicing his instrument is. Usually, I just set aside 20 minutes every day and tell him to go play his violin. Sometimes he is happy to, but there are days when he is pretty reluctant, and so I really like that idea as it will hopefully help him to be less reluctant. http://www.mikesbrassandwoodwind.com