Dangers Of Teaching Piano To Your Own Child

It's not impossible to introduce your child to the piano if you plan to be very gentle about it. But there are dangers in teaching piano to your own child. You need to think of it as a game you two might play together, appropriate for the age and centered on fun.

As soon as you give in to your adult expectations, you go beyond the bounds of childish play, and that is where the danger lies.

It is quite the same when I teach a child, not my own, with the parent's expectations in mind. It is impossible to teach with the parent's expectations in mind. If I do that, I have to ignore the present reality of the child, and that childish reality is all that matters.

 Games for the Piano

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Anything like expectations that take your mind off the child's current state is irrelevant and detrimental to the child's progress. These expectations are the danger zone.

Get A Creative Piano Teacher

In the old days, you would hire a piano teacher to manage the expectations, and the result was almost always failure. The concept of a gruff disciplinarian correcting children relentlessly may seem productive to you. But I know today's kids, and it is not a better way at all.

These conventional teachers make it easy on themselves by having only one way of teaching. Measure up or out you go. They go from page to page, a page a week, a page a lesson. For these piano teachers, there is always another six year old waiting in the wings with a check from Mommy. That's the truth.

You may be lucky and get a brilliant piano teacher who understands kids. Someone besides yourself has to manage the expectations and keep them in terms benevolent to your child's interest in the piano. If you can do that, manage your expectations as if you were a fellow child, you will have scaled the first and major pitfall to a parent introducing piano to their child.

REFERENCES

Homeschool

Teach Your Toddler Piano

Are You Your Child’s Best First Piano Teacher?

The Psychology Of Homeschool Piano

Teach Piano To Your Children

Making Homeschool Piano Work

Homeschool Piano By Number