The Importance of the Piano Parent

It’s the middle of the summer holidays, September is fast approaching and the start of Year 2 along with it.  Your child has had a couple of years to get used to the school system, including learning social skills, working with their classmates and practicing reading, spelling and handwriting at home.

It feels like a good time to choose an after school club or activity to get them involved in, and learning to play the piano has, for some reason or another, always been in the back of your mind for them to try. So, you do some Googling, check out the parent pages on social media, and ask around the local area for a good piano teacher. Success! You find a recommended teacher, attend a trial lesson and your child has a blast, so you sign them up for weekly piano lessons.  This is the crucial point at which your involvement in your child’s piano education journey can help steer it towards a long-lasting, fulfilling experience for your child.  I’m talking about your role as the Piano Parent.

When children begin learning to play the piano, there are so many different elements that all come together to produce results.  One of the most important factors is (you guessed it!) piano practice at home. On the surface, this sounds like a straightforward activity, and in effect it can and should be, but it requires active participation from the Piano Parent in order for it to become part of your child’s daily routine.  Much like brushing their teeth, getting dressed for school or eating breakfast, piano practice will ideally be added into this core routine of activities in your child’s day, rather than a nice-to-have/ negotiable activity. 

This might seem a bit extreme at first, but trust me, it will save you and your child a whole lot of hassle later on.  Establishing the practice habit right from the start gives learning the piano its own identity and importance in your child’s life. They will respect it more and find it far easier to learn all the new movements and concepts because it’s just what they do every day.  The result of this proactive approach to piano practice means not only will your investment in piano lessons go that much further, but your child will have a much more satisfying experience, and this goes a long way towards boosting their self confidence.

I could go on and on about the benefits of playing the piano, but I’ll save that for another time. The point I want to make in this post is that your involvement as the Piano Parent is as important as the effort put in by your child. Being involved in your child’s practice sessions at home not only provides dedicated one to one time for you both, but it also sends the message to your child that what they’re doing is important and valued by not just themselves and their teacher. Children love to show off to their parents and friends, and practice sessions are an excellent way to cultivate this wonderful relationship.

Now, as a mother of two (aged 9 and 6 at the time of writing), I am fully aware of how hard it is to actually achieve the above set up.  I’m not expecting every piano family I teach to 100% get their child to practice daily and effectively without blips along the way.  The situation described above is what I encourage you all to aim for from the start, to begin the piano journey with accurate expectations of what is involved, in order for your child to gain the most value from their lessons.

You may be thinking, ‘Well, both my partner and I work full time, the kids go to breakfast club and after school club, so the only real time to practice has to be at the weekends.’ This situation is fairly common these days but is not an impossible one to adapt to.  Piano practice is often perceived as being sat at the piano/ keyboard for hours on end plodding away, and while this may be the experience of some, in the beginning stages this absolutely should not be the case.  As little as 5 minutes each day is miles better than an hour at the weekend, and far more likely to encourage a regular and effective practice habit than the sporadic back-of-mind weekend approach, which in nearly all cases leads to failure.

It can be tricky as adults to remember what it is like to be learning a new skill, as, for most of us, that was a long time ago. We may have had a mix of experiences when learning something new, some good and some bad, but those experiences will have been directly shaped by the people who were around us at the time (most often our parents, siblings, friends, etc.).  I can pretty much guarantee that the activities you loved the most will have involved receiving positive reassurance from those around you, to give you that little boost needed to keep going when things felt tricky and to celebrate yourself when you succeeded along the way.  I can’t overemphasise enough the value of this encouragement to your child’s positive experience of learning to play the piano. A little encouragement goes a long way and is really all they need to get started.

Even if you’re not a musical parent (and many aren’t), your active Piano Parent role really just comes down to being a reassuring presence while your child practices the piano piece/ technique they are learning, helping them to read their practice notes or understand an instruction, and helping them to establish this consistent positive routine of focusing their mind on piano for a short period each day, and before you know it they will be independently practicing, progressing and succeeding.

If you’ve been considering piano lessons for your child, send me a message and we can book a free trial lesson and take it from there.