Back in July, I posed a question here about extracurricular activities and how much is too much? My girl was getting ready to start kindergarten and I was stressing over whether to sign her up for ballet or gymnastics or both.
In the end, I pushed aside my own deep desire to raise a prima ballerina and asked her what she wanted to do. That turned out to be gymnastics.
Then, her daddy jumped into the fray pushing piano lessons. I’d initially decided to go with the recommendation to limit it to just one after-school activity at her age, but I really have hoped she would inherit her father’s musical talent and he found someone right in the neighborhood who taught out of her home. Thirty minutes a week didn’t seem like that much more, so I went with it.
My question this time is, how long is long enough to tell you child they must try an activity before quitting?
After the first gymnastics lesson where she appeared to be enjoying herself, my girl had a complete melt down in the car on the way home. Gymnastics was too hard! She didn’t want to go again! Well, my pragmatic side immediately said she had to at least finish out the month because we’d already paid for it. But, another side of me wanted her to learn that not everything will come to her as easy as her academics seem to be doing, and that she would have to work at some things in life. So, I held the line and two lessons later she was loving gymnastics.
Six weeks into piano lessons the same turnaround has not happened. Her complaints are very similar – it’s too hard, but also “boring.” Her teacher says she is doing very well and is even ahead of another student the same age who started at the same time. But getting her to practice is like pulling teeth! Actually, it’s harder because her first tooth fell out last weekend with ease, but it was painful for both of us to simply complete two pages in her theory workbook last night. She’s asking to quit. Dad’s not ready for it. I suggested maybe trying just through the end of the year, but neither of them seemed to like that idea.
Do a Google blog search on “quit AND piano” and there is certainly no shortage of discussions on this topic. There are the students who are contemplating it, the teachers who are agonizing over it and reminiscers who are regretting it years later. I myself fall into the latter category – sorta. I do wish I could play, but don’t really have fond memories of the three years I took without ever really learning to read music (I was really good at just memorizing what the teacher showed me and faking my way through).
So are some people just naturals at music and others not? Is six weeks long enough to find out? What are your experiences around this topic?
Laura P. Thomas is the wife of a former rocker and mother of one 6-year-old girl that’s already waaay too interested in The Jonas Brothers. (the apple didn’t fall far) She works in the Global Online team at Dell, evangelizes virtual worlds, and twitters too much as LPT.
My disclaimer is I am not a mom, I saw this post linked on twitter.
Reading this made me wonder if as adults we keep doing so many things we hate because we were taught to keep at things we hated as children. So many of us are stuck in careers and life situations we don’t enjoy, yet we do nothing about it. People are so afraid to make their life what they want it. I don’t mean to say that piano lessons are going to make or break your daughter, just thinking about this concept in general. I think we all have plenty of things we naturally enjoy, why not pursue those instead?
I have two of my own, now 14 & 17, and two step children, 17 and 20. All four are all totally different people. But the commonality is that they will gravitate to their passion. Piano was boring for my daughter, track makes her get up in the morning. My son won’t run unless his life depends on it, but he’s figured out how to continue to practice his bass with two broken wrists (another story - goes back to his lack of athletic ability). My step son has a natural ear - just like his father - and has tried piano, bass and guitar but doesn’t have the motivation to stick with them. My step daughter hates the books but loves tap dancing.
My point is that our job is to expose them to different things to try, and they will tell us verbally or by their actions what the answer is.
To answer your question directly, however, we’ve always made our kids stick with the activity through the end of whatever timeframe was committed to… the little league season, the 6 week lesson cycle, etc. That’s more about teaching responsibility.
Bev Barnetts last blog post..Down to the Wire for the Donors Choose Kids
I also came to this blog via Twitter. I’m a single dad of daughters, and as Bev notes, diff kids will gravitate to diff stuff - but I’d like to throw in the concept of birth order as well. My older daughter, now 12, only wants to do stuff she can do nearly perfectly, the first time. I understand first-born girls are often perfectionists for whom mediocrity is disheartening. That describes her well.
However, my younger daughter is incredibly methodical and will try something over and over until she teaches herself how to do it well. It is as if she has enough confidence in other areas of her life that she can afford to take chances and perhaps even fail in the process.
As for the older one, we start new activities with a “contract” as to how long we will commit before moving on. As Bev wrote, its more about responsibility than the actual activity. But as she is easily frustrated on the learning curve, I pack plenty of fun, rewarding stuff around her schedule to keep her in a positive frame of mind.
Well we are certainly kindred spirits. My 6th grade daughter was in both piano and gymnastics during 5th grade last year. The piano morphed into voice lessons since she decided to audition for an arts magnet junior high school (entrance by audition only, she made it for singing, yay!) and her teacher told us she had a far better chance of getting in for voice than piano, which proved true. The gymnastics has become a longer term love though, and she’s quite good, advancing to level 4 (when you’re a level 10 you head to the Nationals) in January.
My policy? Whatever the extra-curricular activity, my daughter has to LOVE it or I am officially too busy to schlep to lessons and too poor to pay. As for so many other challenges in life, I always come back to “Follow your Bliss” as a guiding principle.
Now that my girl sings every day at school, private voice lessons would be overkill, so the music interest resolved itself on its own, thank god. But yes, six weeks of a weekly activity is absolutely enough time to decide whether to stick with it or bail. My rule of thumb is slightly tweaked for sports: if there is a season they have to finish out the season.
If your daughter is only in kindergarten (or even if it were 1st/2nd grade) take a break and revisit in a year or two. Everything changes, especially kids!
Karen Talaveras last blog post..America, Growing Up At Last
Wow! Thank you for all the great responses!
Each of you have given me food for thought and good ideas on how to approach this.
~L
I think the problem lies in determining whether a child hates lessons because:
a) They’re lazy in general and need some habits changed
b) They hate the teacher
3) They really are not cut out for piano instruction
The first two answers are fixable. I think, as a parent, you have to be very aware of why a child is feeling negatively towards something before acting. By the way, I enjoyed your article and wish you the best of luck.
My mom put me in piano when I was 4. I hated it but she made me keep up with it and I don’t think I loved it until I was a teen. Why would I? There were so many other things that I could be doing with my time- going outside, playing hide and seek, sleeping.
Your daughter may not like piano now because it is boring and there is no fun movement involved. I am going to put my daughter in piano when she is old enough and will make her stick with it unless her teacher tells me that she is not progressing too well.
I think music lessons are the least pleasurable for children because they requires them to sit still and focus for a lot longer than they are able. Gymnastics don’t require her to practice at home but piano requires more of a commitment.
12 years ago when I became a single parent we stopped all extracurricular activities. Choice. No more soccer, singing lessons, ballet and tae kwon do. After school we walked home - the kids sat at the kitchen table had a healthy snack and we talked. They did homework, I made dinner from scratch - they helped me. We ate, talked some more and after baths we read together. I wanted/ we needed to recreate the basics, We needed to redefine family. I feel strongly that non-activity was the very best thing I have ever done as a parent. My son 21 now turned out just fine. He’s not some freak because he missed playing soccer as a kid. On his own he decide his activities, ironically what he stumbled into and became passionate about ended up becoming his major in college. My daughter, a remarkable performer did all that she wanted during school and at 18 will study both music and theatre in college. Both are athletic, health minded and get their schoolwork done. To me they acquired those attributes during our say no time!
Just wanted to thank you all again for the great input. I forwarded a link to my hubby (probably first time he’s read any of my posts here) and it really helped us in further discussion.
We’ve ended the piano lessons for now, with the thought that if she’s really got talent in that area, she can always come back when desire matches it.
She’s happy, and we’ve learned an important parenting lesson - we’ll be taking the advice to enter into any future activities with a clear “contract” outlining the duration and responsibilities.
Thank you!!
Laura P Thomass last blog post..My Dead Cat Diary