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.