The Role of Parents
By Philip Johnston
Page 1 of 8
(This article is an excerpt from Philip Johnston's new book The Practice
Revolution: Getting great results from the six days between lessons)
Introduction
 No matter how effective your tuition, no matter how engaging
your analogies, nor sharp your wit, each music lesson still only occupies a mere
thirty minutes of the student’s week.
This means that for the rest of the week, either the parents
have to provide support, or the student works completely alone. And most
students really should not work alone, any more than they should play
with power tools by themselves.
Parents are usually delighted and excited to help if they
possibly can, but in many cases simply haven’t got a clue how to go about it,
particularly if they have no musical training of their own. In the absence of
such training, they have to focus on the things they can understand—and
of all of these issues, one screams louder than all others:
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...there is plenty parents can do, even when playing Truant Officer is not on the list. Parents don’t need any musical training whatsoever to make a tremendous difference to their child’s music lessons. |
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How much practice is my kid doing?
Parents use the answer to this question to draw conclusions
about their child’s motivation, progress, and from that, the success of
lessons as a whole. The parent’s role is then reduced to that of Truant
Officer, catching their kids sneaking off fishing when they should be in the
practice rooms. Oh no you don’t. Stop having fun, and turn off that
computer game—this is no time for being happy. You’re supposed to practice.
It’s almost as if music lessons are simply supposed to be
Character Building, like shovelling snow, or raking leaves. In the face of this,
the student comes to associate a new word with music lessons:
Chore.
It becomes just one more thing that stops them from spending
their free time in their own way.
Once that association becomes entrenched, you will lose that
student. Maybe not this week, or even this semester. But you will lose them.
So if parents are not supposed to be fussing about how much
practice their child does, how can they help?
There is plenty parents can do, even when playing Truant
Officer is not on the list. Parents don’t need any musical training
whatsoever to make a tremendous difference to their child’s music lessons. They
need to dedicate some time to the process, they need to be patient as they work
with their child in this new fashion…
…and they need to read this.
Show me the first hint
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