Piano Video Lesson: How to Get Your Kids to Practice Piano

I'm Robert Estrin, you're watching LivingPianos.com. The question is how to get your kids to practice.

Boy, you know, this is a really important subject because you want your kids to enjoy the piano, but if they never practice, how are they going to be justifying the lessons that you're taking the time to take them to and spending the money. So you feel really committed and you want your kids to be committed and sometimes it can really come to loggerheads.

So I'm going to give you some tips today. I have vast experience with this subject. I come from a family of teachers. Both my parents were music teachers. My sister is a piano teacher.

I mean, I have just countless people. I've taught piano pedagogy to many teachers and this is a universal challenge for any of you out there who teach kids or if you're a parent with kids studying the piano.

I started teaching the piano when I was in high school assisting my father with his teaching as my sister did before me and it's been a continuum of my career since that time.

I pretty much always taught with very, very brief periods of time where teaching was not a part of my life.

Today I have the great privilege of teaching students all over the world because of my popular YouTube channel and LivingPianos .com. I get many emails and I've got people in Australia, to Alaska and all points between and for the most part they're serious students and I have some kids who are just wonderful to work with. However, when I was starting out particularly after I graduated from music conservatory and making a living as a private piano teacher, you know, I took all kinds of kids and adults as well and not all of them really loved the piano the way my students do today and it was a great challenge and I saw all different ways that parents dealt with their kids, some effective ways and some that were not, that were really counterproductive. So I want to kind of give you some tips.

So the first thing you have to understand about working at the piano is that practicing correctly is hard work. It really is. So when you tell your kids to practice and you just tell them they got to practice for 30 minutes or an hour or 20 minutes, whatever it is, realize that if they're doing it correctly it's an incredibly intense experience and you must appreciate that. I remember my wife had a student and the mother was always upset with the kid for not practicing enough and then eventually the mother started taking lessons and then she finally realized, oh my gosh, this is really hard and so you've got to appreciate that. Now to encourage your kids to practice, you've got to think of it first of all the way you think of so many other things in life.

Your kids, given a choice, probably wouldn't clean their room, do their homework, brush their teeth. There's a myriad of things that your kids are kind of coaxed or trained to do and piano practice must fit into that realm. So whatever techniques you've used in other things to get your kids to do what they need to do is obviously appropriate for piano practice but since piano practice is not something that's legally required the way school is or a matter of personal hygiene, the way brushing your teeth is, and so therefore they might feel there's some wiggle room there.

So you must encourage your kids to practice by understanding and appreciating the hard work they do and showcasing their talents to your family and friends whenever it's possible. If they've been working really hard and they have a piece they can play well, when company comes over let them shine, let them get a chance to enjoy the fruits of their labor and also encourage them by bringing them to concerts of music they appreciate and expand their scope of music of classical concerts and other styles of music that maybe they haven't been exposed to. I can't tell you how many times people say to me, oh, for example, I hate opera and I say, have you ever been to an opera? No. I say, well, how do you know? If you've never been to an opera specially, if it's like a great opera company like the Metropolitan Opera, the experience, the total century experiences of the staging, the costuming, the storyline, the music, the full symphony orchestra, not to mention the singers, is just an astounding experience and you can't get that listening to music on your phone or even listening on a sound system, it's not the same at all. Well, it's also true with classical music in general. You can listen to music, some types of music actually translate better to electronic medium because, for example, rock bands, that music's coming out of speakers whether you're going to a live event or not.

But acoustic music sounds so much better when you're listening to it live because it doesn't sound the same coming through speakers. The whole idea of the concert hall and the surround experience of the sound in a great hall can't be described or duplicated any other way. So take your kids to concerts but also play them great recordings. You don't have to like bludgeon them with it but just get them exposed. They may just latch onto a few key pieces that could change their lives and make them appreciate it. So remember to encourage your children, it's hard work to practice correctly. Expose them to great music both live and recording and showcase their talents whenever possible so that they can feel appreciated for the hard work they do with the instrument.

Share your stories here at livingpianos.com and on YouTube in the comments about what has worked for you or the challenges you face. We can work as a community to help all of you with your practicing and your loved ones practicing at the piano. Again, I'm Robert Estrin. LivingPianos.com, your online piano resource. If you haven't subscribed, this is a great time to get notifications of future videos. Ring the bell. See you next time. Thanks for joining me.

Find the original source of this video at this link: https://livingpianos.com/how-to-get-your-kids-to-practice-piano/

Automatic video-to-text transcription by DaDaScribe.com

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