If you are patient enough, you will find that many kids are late-bloomers at the piano.
This means that they may take years of lessons, but not latch on enthusiastically until some mysterious point in the future.
There are two factors governing this process.
First, the longevity of the lessons must be assured so that the child survives long enough to build the various skills without becoming a resentful robot. You have to be in it to win it, and making piano lessons a non-stressful experience allows these slower moving late bloomers to find their balance without a sense of discouragement and failure. It may take months or years.
Second, the lessons must be conducted in a setting so benevolent that the child wishes to return. Every time such a child leaves their unspectacular piano lesson, you have “money in the bank” of enthusiasm if they are willing to return, if only because they like the entertaining teacher.
It takes dozens if not hundreds of such non-threatening encounters to make the average child into a child who is willing to try piano on their own terms. It takes even more to make an average child into an enthusiastic piano hobbyist.
I submit that I can make ANY child enthusiastic about the piano if you give me enough time, enough lessons in which sometimes nothing seems to happen. It is enough for me if there is the development of the student’s sense that this teacher is wonderfully patient and wants me to play. That is emotional real estate upon which a piano teacher can build.
Every child has a slow day, some have a slow year, and there is no moving this stone unless it wishes to move. Continuing the stone comparison, you can convince the stone that a little movement will not hurt at all.
“Review lessons” are a way of giving both poor and good students a chance to catch up to themselves, to refine songs they had started but dropped, to find new achievements that they didn’t know they had made or to which they were close.
I use review lessons with late bloomers to convince them that they do know several songs, to give them a feeling of accomplishment. To such a child, playing any song with no major errors is a huge accomplishment. It matters not if the fingering is perfect, if both hands are used, if parts are left out or rearranged in their childish heads. What matters is that they have pride of ownership of a song.
You have no idea how many hundreds of times I introduce a song to a child, have it rejected, only to find two years later that they want to complete it and have learned almost the whole thing in their own way.
Any sign of memorization is a sign of genius, as far as I am concerned. It is a sign that the inner physical workings of the song has penetrated their brain and being, and now can be acted upon like any musician.
Late bloomers almost always memorize their way into a song. It is their way of inhabiting the song at their own pace.
That is why it is very important for kids to play music that is important to them, no matter how silly the song is to adult and curriculum.
To the child, the song is the most important thing there is in a piano lesson. If they like the song, they will try again and again to play it.
Find the songs a late bloomer likes, make them playable and accessible for their abilities, and they will bloom sooner.
But be prepared for many a piano lesson that seemingly produces nothing. As long as a lesson does not produce the desire to quit, it is a victory.
By John Aschenbrenner Copyright 2010 Walden Pond Press All Rights Reserved
See also KNOWING WHEN TO BACK OFF IN A CHILD'S PIANO LESSON
See also WHY DELAY READING MUSIC
See also EXTREME PIANO GAMES FOR AN ADHD CHILD
See also WHY CHILDREN NEED FREEDOM TO LEARN PIANO
See also ARE KIDS PIANO RECITALS HARMFUL?
