How to empower your child to embrace daily piano practice
4 Steps to get your child practicing with ease.
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Over the years, the number one question I’ve received from parents is this: How do I get my child to practice? Why won’t my child head to the piano without prompting, sit down, and practice the material they are supposed to be working on?
It does take a bit of thoughtful effort on your part to get your child practicing regularly, and there may be times during your child’s piano journey when you’ll need to revisit this article to help your kid get back into a good practice routine. But it’s never impossible to get a child into a practice routine.
Step One- Do an audit of your home piano station
Let’s start by having you take a look at your home piano. Your home piano is the lynchpin to your child’s work at the piano, akin to a household “commuter car.” If your home piano has challenges, it’s no wonder your child might be reluctant to play. I know I’d rather clean bathrooms or organize the garage than practice the piano when my home instrument is out of tune, or worse, has a squeaky pedal or sticky key!
If you have an acoustic (nonelectric) piano, has it been tuned recently? Are all the keys working? How about the damper pedal? If your student has a digital piano or keyboard to work on, let’s look at the base; is it secured tightly to the keyboard part? Or does it wobble? How about the music rack? Is it securely fastened? Does the plugged-in foot pedal (damper pedal) slide around when your child tries to use it? If so, position your keyboard and pedal against a wall so it doesn’t slide. Or else put some good ol’ duct tape under the pedal to keep it from moving.
Do you have headphones near the digital piano that your child has ready access to? Headphones are a bit of a double-edged sword; it’s hard to monitor what your child is doing when they are practicing with headphones on. However, if your piano is in a busy area of the house, your child may feel more comfortable working out songs if they are the only ones that can hear the process. **Side tip- If your child does use headphones, be sure and ask them to play for you at least once per week, so they don’t develop performance anxiety.
And take a look at what your child is sitting on when practicing. Hopefully, it is a stable piano bench, keyboard bench, or straight, tall chair that is high enough to keep your child’s forearms parallel to the floor. No slanting or low dining chairs please, and don’t expect much work to get done if your student is sitting on an office chair that spins while practicing!
Click here for an affordable, stable home piano bench recommendation that I’ve successfully used at my own teaching studio. It’s adjustable, so as your child grows, you can change the height. And bonus- there’s space for your child to keep their piano books right inside the seat. More on this in a minute.
Lastly, let’s think about where in your house your piano is located. Please note that there is no “right” answer to this. Every child and every household has different needs. Some children thrive when the piano is located in a central location, others cannot handle distractions. Would your child be more inclined to practice if the piano were located in a main living space or office off a central location? Or perhaps in a basement or bonus room? If you have a digital piano or keyboard, you can easily try moving your piano to a new location to see if practice minutes and focus improve.
Wherever your piano is located, however, do be sure that all screens and background music are turned off while a child is practicing, and ideally, family foot traffic is kept to a minimum during their daily practice time.
Step 2- Clarify what, exactly, is your child supposed to be doing at the piano
Ok, so your piano station is in optimal shape. But does your child know what to do once they sit down at the piano? Telling a child to “go practice the piano” is potentially a large, abstract, open-ended task on par with “go create an art piece” or “go create a non-profit organization.” The more you and your child’s teacher can clarify what needs to be done at the piano each day, the more inclined your child will be to “go practice.”
Let’s consider a basic assignment a beginning pianist might be given. A list of daily tasks to be accomplished printed out in writing on your music rack can be a good start, but can the list be more specific? For example, instead of saying:
Learn Hot Cross Buns and Mary Had a Little Lamb
Try instead:
Play Hot Cross Buns 2x (two times) daily, or more, on High and Low keys
Play Mary Had a Little Lamb 3x (three times) daily. Play any measure with a wrong note in it 5x (five times) daily or more with all right notes.
The more specific the assignment, the easier it will be for your child to sit down and get started on it.
Another potential blockade in a child’s practice is not knowing where to find the pieces to be played; either within the book or where the book itself is. Many times I’ve had a young student come to their lesson and tell me that they couldn’t practice because they couldn’t find their book. I’ve learned to respond to this statement by asking the student “Have you told your parents that you cannot find your books?” Nine times out of ten the answer is “no.”
Try keeping all of the active music books your child is working on either on the music rack, in the piano bench, or on a shelf or basket close to your piano. Print out your child’s assignment for the week, either in a practice book or a spiral binder, and place it on the music rack as well. Mark the songs to be played clearly, with colorful post-its or paper clips.
A list of daily tasks is often enough direction for beginning students. I don’t like to ask for daily minutes with beginning children, as this can lead to mindless practicing; ask a 7-year-old to practice piano for 10 minutes daily, and chances are they will play their favorite song over and over again, then explore the squeak in the foot pedal for the remaining 5 minutes! However as a pianist ages and the music becomes more complex, setting a “troubleshooting timer” can be a useful tool.
Step 3- Take a hard look at your family’s overall schedule
Another reason why your child may not be practicing is because they simply are too busy or too exhausted. Piano practice is not a passive activity like watching TV, but one that requires mental focus. Asking a child to sit down at the piano after a busy day of school, activities, and play, could simply be too much. Can you work in that practice at the start of the day instead, when they are fresh?
Your child may be able to sit down at the piano and go through the motions of the practice, but if they are tired, progress will be minimal, and their response to wrong notes will be emotional and unhelpful (ie “this is hard, I’m no good”) rather than constructive (ie “oh, this spot needs extra practice”.)
Take a hard look at your child’s daily, and weekly schedule. How much of the day is spent in school, in activities, or in the car as you drive to other activities? How much down time and unstructured time does your child have? Learning to play the piano can be a wonderful activity for a child. However, if your child is in the middle of three sports seasons, dance classes, extra math classes, and adopting a new family pet, then this is not the right time to add the daily rigor of piano practice! Feeling rushed to get daily practice in during the fragments of time that may happen between running from one activity to the next can be ok in the short term, but is not a way to build a positive mindset around practicing. If this is the case in your home, wait to add piano studies until there’s a reasonable amount of time in your child’s schedule to allow for joyful, relaxed, daily practice.
Step 4- Tough Love- Be the enforcer
OK, so your piano is in tip-top shape, your child’s books are laid out on the music rack, and you’ve found a bit of quiet time each day for your child to practice. But instead of running to the piano, your child is running to their screens! If you are waiting for your child to put down their phone, their game station, the iPad, or turn off the TV and go practice on their own volition, you will most likely be waiting for a long, long time.
The crux of the situation here is that playing the piano is not easy, and watching a screen is. Every time your child starts to learn a new song, it will be difficult. But the sense of accomplishment that will come after that song is learned is significantly greater than anything gleaned off a screen will be.
Here’s my tough love to parents in this situation; it’s essential to remember that the parent is in charge of the child’s schedule, activities, and entertainment. It’s up to you to create, and enforce the rule that piano practice happens daily, and before media, video games, tv time, or playdates. Don’t worry about your child’s initial complaints, no matter how loud they are. Once the routine is established and your child starts to see their piano growth, their complaints will fade to an occasional grumble. I promise.
Consider the gift you are giving your child by requiring daily practice from a young age. I meet adults daily who tell me that they wish they could have learned to play the piano when they were young, but I have yet to meet an adult who complains about having to practice as a child! Help your child develop a practice routine when they are young and demands are light on their schedule. It is so much easier than trying to start it when they are an adult juggling a job, a family, a pet, and household chores!
In closing
Daily practice is essential to learning to play the piano. Without daily practice, playing the piano becomes a challenge that grows from a molehill to an unapproachable mountain. The good news is that getting your child to practice won’t always be a struggle. Getting into that routine will take effort from you upfront, but once established, should start to happen automatically. Your child will enter into that wonderful place of practicing daily with minimal reminders from you. Taking the time to sort through the obstacles keeping your child from practicing is well worth it.
To summarize, get your child in a practice routine by taking a hard look at the following, and make changes where needed:
Step 1- Audit your home piano station
Step 2- Clarify “the work” to be done each day at the piano
Step 3- Create space in your child’s daily and weekly schedule for practice
Step 4- Require, and enforce, daily practice before entertainment
Need additional help? Schedule a one-on-one virtual consultation with me here. Good luck, and let me know how it goes! shannonkeelerpiano@gmail.com