My post is about having the strength to recognize a child's desire and dislike, having the courage to wait for a better opportunity in the future, and having a heart to understand the child's heart. The first step is just to be patient.
The Symptoms
Maggie has been happily playing her music by heart and I suspected she wasn't doing note reading, but I let it slide until recently. Her other two classmates are boys her age and they are amazing at piano. The MYC method truly works well for them, as they were just flying through the pieces and learning new ones ahead of time while Maggie and I were still working on the recital piece from before Christmas. On the plus side, her C major scale in the right hand and left hand are carefully executed. In the fall, the teacher taught them the C-G bridges to go with the tonic, mediant and dominant degrees of the C scale. She loved it! It was sad to see her level of interest and passion change. Over the summer (6 months ago) she was very enamoured with the A minor scale! Now she sulks through it and I have to resort to bribery.
Then we started note reading on the staff with real notation and things just went downhill from there. She was always looking at my face and my reaction, more so than the notes on the page. I should've just let her look at the hands but I wanted to be sure she was reading. But after pointing out every note, she would wait for me to say the name and look at my face, which was not a smiley face unfortunately, which added to the tension. It got to the point where she would find every excuse not to practise piano. Occasionally there would be the day where she would take out the "music rhythm bag" and copy out the music on the floor, which was startling! Or we would do the homework pages (though usually it was her younger brother AJ who did the homework part for there). There were times when tears were shed; my precious tears that is. She had every excuse possible to get out of piano practise. It got to the point where she even would fall asleep at the group lesson (probably a Sunday afternoon scheduling issue).
For my child I poured my heart into, starting piano at age 3 with all the hope for her to be a child prodigy, I knew I couldn't keep this up until age 17 let alone 7. I decided to stop the lessons and perhaps resume at a more appropriate age for her. I'm not proud that we couldn't finish the second year of piano lessons, that I let her stop in mid-February instead of pushing onwards to the end of June. But I wanted to end on a good note, and we could say, "Let's have the last lesson, say good bye to your teacher."
Decision Making Steps
Identify the problem - Maggie loses interest and hates piano, loss of motivation to practise
List some solutions - stop lessons, change the teacher, change the method, (can't change the parent!)
Practical steps - Call the teacher and talk in person, be prepared to agree to disagree
Decisions - depending on the studio policy, lessons could be terminated with or without notice, ask for a refund for the remaining months (March to June)
In the end I had a heart to heart talk with her teacher, and we ended on good terms. I had referred many students to her, all doing very well, and I indicated that I would certainly continue to do the same.
After Action Report
It's been a week, Maggie has approached the piano to play her scales on her own once! This happened when it was my turn to practise piano. Perhaps that was the way to motivate her to the piano by hearing me play. We are still keeping music alive as she still likes singing and directing the Mississippi Hot dog of Suzuki Book 1, looking for the right time to sit down and play it with her, though perhaps we should wait. The obvious question is, why don't I teacher her; well I would rather wait a bit.
Above all Maggie loves singing. She can listen to any song on the radio and start belting out the words in tune; she can improvise the words for any nursery rhyme with alternate lyrics; she teaches AJ her French songs from school and they sing together. I have a first recording of her singing "Itsy Bitsy Spider" at 22 months, it's golden. Last summer at age 3.5 she was singing Jana Alayra songs from VBS and acting like an MC leading singspiration. My husband has considered voice lessons for her or even joining a youth choir. There is talent and heart there, perhaps that is where we could apply it.
As a teacher, when did this happen to me and how did I deal with it.
- A high school student who lost interest and wanted to pursue a new hobby. The siblings have since joined my studio
- A high school student who had a busy schedule with part time jobs, after school activities, and transportation issues; I recommended a more suitable location for piano lessons at the Long and McQuade Music School run by the music book store near to the high school.
- A 3 year old in my group class wasn't quite ready; she will try private lessons at 3.5 in the spring time.
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