Life is so busy.
Piano practice may not be at the top of the list of things to do. But hopefully, our pupil is at least getting to it soon after the lesson now.
Two things to help with practice time:
- Find a regular time when your child is not tired that can be dedicated to doing exactly what we did in the lesson. We can do so much more in the next lesson if this happens. Even if it is only a short time it will make all the difference.
I had a friend who wanted to keep up playing the cello over his time studying maths at university. He told himself that no matter what he would commit to practising 15 minutes a day. Some days that was all he did and that was fine, but other days once he was there he got carried away and did more. Suffice to say he completed his maths degree and kept up his skills on the cello. It no doubt helped his other learning in useful ways too.
- Decide on a realistic length of time for practice appropriate to the age and stage of your child.
When I was growing up the minimum expectation was 1 hour a day, 6 days a week. With modern schedules these days that would be a challenge, but my hope is that you will find a time that is as frequent as possible and a time length that is reasonable and manageable for the age of your child. Talk to me about this further if you need to.
Take a fresh look at practice. It needs to be a realistic length at a regular time. We want them to finish their practice on a happy note with a sense of achievement. So if everyone is grumpy, reassess the length of time you are allowing. Again, let me know how you get on. Every time I get feedback from you it helps me do my job better in some way or other. Next time I’ll give some thoughts about how to maximise the time we do set aside for practice.