How Parents Can Help a Child With Piano Practice

Talking With Teachers, Setting Goals, Helps Children Learn Piano

Oct 8, 2009

By communicating with teachers and listening, even parents who known nothing about music can help their children learn piano and develop good practice habits.

Learning how to practice piano is the key to learning to play the piano. But learning effective practice techniques is a difficult task, especially for young children who haven't yet learned to identify mistakes, let alone find effective ways to fix them. The key point parents and music students need to understand is that effective practice does not mean doing the same thing over and over again. In fact, mindless repetition can be detrimental if the student simply repeats (and hence learns) mistakes.

How Parents Can Help Their Children Practice

The quality of practice is so important that some teachers abandon time-based minimums for daily practice, and instead advocate setting practice goals that are centered around achieving certain technical or musical results.

Ironically, while the basics of good practice seem difficult for children (and sometimes, for their parents, as well), good practice habits actually make learning piano much easier, much less frustrating, and much more fun. By helping children establish good practice habits as early in their musical education as possible, parents will be putting a music student on the road to learning an instrument the most effective way possible.

Parents of young beginners should be sure that they understand the teacher's practice instructions, because most second and third graders will forget what they are supposed to do between the end of the lesson and the beginning of the next practice. Most teachers write practice instructions in an assignment book. Even so, young children will need help to remember which tasks need to be be practiced.

Goal-Centered Practice Strategies

Goal-centered practice instructions give more guidance than a simple mandate to "practice for a half an hour every day." However, for parents to help, they have to be attentive not only to the fact that the child is sitting at the piano, but to what, exactly, is being practiced and how. Often, children will simply bang away happily for a few minutes on a song they "made up" or a chord progression their best friend taught them. Parents need to practice "mindful listening" as much as their children need to do engage in "mindful practice."

Even a non-musical parent can help a child enormously by going over the practice instructions point by point and asking the child: "Can you play that scale with your eyes closed. Show me." Or: "Did you practice that line of the song so you can play it with no mistakes? Show me." Or: "Your teacher wrote that you should be counting out loud, but I didn't hear any counting. Can you show me?"

One sure give-away that poor practice is taking place is easy to spot. Most children will start at the beginning of a song and play through to the end, with intermittent stops and starts, occasionally correcting mistakes. They then go back to the beginning and repeat the process, generally with the exact same mistakes. Any reputable piano teacher teaches children to break a piece of music into small parts, and to correct mistakes before moving on. A child who is playing a mistake-ridden piece from beginning to end over and over again either has a poor teacher or is not following instructions.

Finally, parents should be sure that any written homework is completed before the next lesson.

Communicating with Music Teachers About Practice Issues

A parent can also help by communicating with the teacher. If the teacher does not include practice suggestions or goals in the assignment book, a parent shouldn't be afraid to ask for suggestions. Similarly, the parent should also discuss any practice issues with the teacher. For example:

A good teacher will have some strategies to deal with such problems, and can address these issues in lessons.

More Resources for Parents of Music Students

Beginners and parents who don't have a musical background can check out some of the articles found on practicespot.com, a resource for students, parents, and teachers.

The copyright of the article How Parents Can Help a Child With Piano Practice in Music Education is owned by Karen Berger. Permission to republish How Parents Can Help a Child With Piano Practice in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.