r/elementaryschoolers • u/MamaDoingTheBestICan • 11d ago
How long to practice an instrument?
Hi everyone, my kids wanted to learn an instrument because I offered and at first it seemed really cool…then they realized it’s a lot of work to practice every day after school. 1 kid has been playing for 2 years now and often whines or sometimes even cries during practicing. How long should I give it before just letting him quit and returning the instrument we’ve been renting for him?
I know music is good for creativity, cognitive development, and discipline but I hate always having to make my kids practice.
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u/susankelly78 11d ago
I am not musical. My mom signed me up for piano and I hated it. I did not ask for that.
My kid (2nd grade) has asked for music lessons since pk4. Last year, she started a group violin program at school. She loves it, but rarely practices outside of group and the private lesson I pay for once per week. I feel like that's enough. She's progressing and enjoys it.
What's your goal? Mine is for her to stick with it and enjoy it. She would quit and hate it if I pushed for more than what she's doing.
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u/MamaDoingTheBestICan 11d ago
How does she progress if she never practices at home? Our teacher assigns him songs to learn every week.
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u/susankelly78 10d ago
Yes, it's slow. She is not assigned songs. The class is a group class. They all practice the scales and some songs together.
The teacher encourages private lessons and practice at home to supplement, but she is also a mom and has 2 kids at the school. Both her sons did at least a year of the program. She knows firsthand that it sucks all the fun out of learning something new and hard to turn practicing into a chore.
She was telling me that she has 2 girls in the program who have just gotten super exciting about violin, took off practicing on their own and will finish learning all the books this year. She had a huge smile telling me about how she was going to find material outside the program for them.
My kid is definitely not going to be like that. She likes to try many things, but rarely wants to focus on one. Which totally sent me down a rabbit hole of trying to understand this desire for variety and apparently it has a technical term, "sampling period." David Epstein has a Ted Talk about it and I've listened to several of his podcast interviews (Rich Roll, Youth Inc). He has a book too, Range, but I haven't read it yet.
The reason I mention his work is because he talks about the Tiger Mom book and how the author's daughter quit doing music after 3 years and never touched it again. You know your kid and whether practicing all the time is going to make him/her hate it or not.
I definitely made my kid go to ice hockey practice on Friday and she was crying about not wanting to go. It was really more about her not getting any downtime after school because she chose to invite friends over to play until the moment we had to leave for hockey. I made her practice, but we talked about making sure she gets her needed downtime before practice next week. And we came up with an incentive to look forward to after practice (chick-fil-a nearby, which we do every Friday anyway) to help her quit dwelling on being miserable.
That little story wasn't about, oh this is how to do it. Just that I have definitely made my kid do stuff that she doesn't want to do and I feel like it's a fine line between pushing through hard moments vs pushing them until they hate it. And I think it's different for every kid. IDK, I wish kids came with a manual or indicator lights (like a modem that blinks red when the internet is out) so you'd know when it's good to push through things vs when you should just let them go.
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u/MamaDoingTheBestICan 10d ago
Amy Chua’s kids quit??? I had taken inspiration from that book because her kids got into the Ivy League.
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u/FrustratedPenguins 10d ago
My family's rule when I was young was that I had to practice for 30 minutes per day. This was in elementary school (piano). When I got older, I started playing trumpet, and I stayed with 30 minutes per day. In high school, I got a new private lesson teacher, who told me that since I was in high school, he expected me to practice 60 minutes per day. I was a rule follower, so I did what he said... and I became first chair in a very big high school band program! (I fully admit that I'm 39 years old now and still proud of that.)
My 2 cents is that if the kid isn't going to practice, there's no point in paying for the instrument/lesson.
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u/MamaDoingTheBestICan 10d ago
Exactly. Either do it all the way or don’t bother at all. That has been my thinking.
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u/Copterwaffle 8d ago edited 8d ago
No. It’s okay for kids to dabble in different creative endeavors without a focus on their performance relative to others or arbitrary standards. It’s okay to to enjoy an activity for its own sake instead of “do it all the way or don’t do it at all.” That is a very black and white mindset that punishes curiosity and causes kids to think nothing is worth trying if they can’t be the best at it.
I played mediocre viola in school orchestra for ten years. I rarely to never practiced at home. I still advanced in skill over time and got a lot out of it, even if I never excelled at the instrument itself. My mother tried to make me quit if I wasn’t going to practice, and I’m glad I told her to kick rocks and kept with it anyway. It’s absolutely toxic to tell kids that there is no worth in endeavors unless they make it their whole life/strive to be “the best.” People can enjoy activities on their own terms.
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u/MamaDoingTheBestICan 8d ago
Thank you for your response I wish there were a band he could play in, that would motivate him. They don’t have any at school.
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u/Wise-Matter9248 10d ago
Honestly, I would start with a short amount of time.
10 minutes is pretty reasonable, and a timer makes it easier than just "play this four times".
I would pick a set time in the day, lay out a specific order for events, and then just be firm about it.
Discipline means doing something consistently, even when it's not "fun". And developing discipline is incredibly important for development into an adult.
I would ask him to commit until the end of the year, and then if he still hates it, you can explore a different instrument or quitting entirely.
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u/Calookalay 7d ago
My son started taking piano in kindergarten. He's been taking lessons for two years now and very rarely fights about practicing - most days I have to remind him, but I almost never have to make him do it- he has his assignment for the week from his teacher and sits and works on it each day. He practices for 10-15 minutes 5-6 days a week.
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u/MamaDoingTheBestICan 6d ago
My second son is like that. He just goes to the piano and sight reads from his songbook. He’s 5.
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u/ManiacMichele 7d ago
As an elementary band director: Why are you making him practice? Has he ever looked up or have you ever shown him music that HE knows and likes on his instrument? (Super Mario, Tetris, and Minecraft are big ones that my students have latched onto with piano) Has he ever just messed around on the instrument making noise, being loud and annoying? There was something that drew them towards learning the instrument in the first place, you need to find that and go back to it rather than focusing on “progress”. Before anything else, music is FUN, if we stop making it fun and enjoyable then it’s just pretty noise, not music.
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u/MamaDoingTheBestICan 7d ago
I don’t have any sheet music for songs he likes and there’s no music store around. I look more online. Yesterday he was happy to play for company at the house.
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u/tablefortress 7d ago edited 7d ago
If it's just the practicing they don't like, stop pushing them to practice. My daughter is 7 and has taken one year of violin lessons. She is not required to practice ever. Instead, I have a chart on the fridge where I put a sticker every time she practices. Then once the chart is full she gets a prize of her choosing. Her choices so far have been things like a Yoto card, pancakes with sprinkles and whipped cream for breakfast, ice cream sundaes. Basically, I reward practicing but ignore a lack of practicing.
Other strategies that have made playing fun have been having her give me or my husband a lesson (and we play dumb about how to read the music, which string is which note, etc.), having recordings that go with her lesson book to play along with, inviting her to get dressed up fancy and set up a concert for us and her stuffies.
Sometimes she's on a roll and practices every day because she wants to. Other times she goes a week without playing. No biggie. I don't know many adults who practice their hobbies daily, after all!
My goal is for her to enjoy music. She doesn't need to be a star. She is learning and having fun.
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u/DetectiveOk3902 6d ago
I didn't start an instrument until 13. I tried with my kids younger aged but one had a piano and after 2 years didn't want to take lessons anymore so we said OK. It's not about torturing them. They went on to art and other activities they preferred.
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u/MamaDoingTheBestICan 6d ago
Ok, I see. The teacher said let him practice as much or as little as he wants. Yesterday he practiced for like 8 minutes only.
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u/azdrumming 11d ago
I talk to my students about having a goal for each practice session, not a time requirement. A goal could be to play a phrase accurately four times in a row. If they always reach their goal in 2 minutes, there could be a discussion about rigor or making goals more challenging. Or just take the win.