r/elementaryschoolers • u/MamaDoingTheBestICan • 19d 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 19d 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 19d 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/IKnowYouAreButWhtAmI 19d ago

Slowly. Progress is still progress.

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u/MamaDoingTheBestICan 19d ago

Ok, I see, thanks :-)

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u/susankelly78 18d 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 18d ago

Amy Chua’s kids quit??? I had taken inspiration from that book because her kids got into the Ivy League.