Ensuring Your Child’s Success Between Lessons

It’s easy to feel motivated when you are around others trying to achieve the same thing. In a guitar class, everyone is in the moment and having fun; it helps keep you focused. But what happens when you go home, and you have to keep up the progress when no one is around?

For younger students, this is particularly difficult. It is believed that children do not develop abstract thought until around the age of 12. What that means is that more complex ideas like goal-setting, perseverance, and imagining themselves in the future are completely foreign, and there is not even a capacity to crystallize these thoughts.

This is why it is so incredibly important for you, the parent, to take an active approach in your child’s musical development. Younger students really only observe and process things that are directly in front of them, so they can’t quite comprehend the benefits of a scheduled practice routine (hint: when they are in class at the school, the instructor is simply taking on this role for the duration of the class!)

At home, this responsibility falls to you. You must encourage the child to practice what they are supposed to each and every day. It’s not that the child is actively avoiding practice; it’s simply that, caught up with the events of the day, the child usually has whatever is in front of them on their mind instead!

If you want to see your child’s musical abilities truly flourish, you must remind them that their practice is now a part of their daily routine, just like putting on shoes in the morning and brushing teeth in the evening. Set a designated practice time each day, and stick to it. Whereas children can’t really plan out their day ahead of time, they can certainly adapt to a daily routine when it is consistent.

Do this, and you will get to see your child’s musical abilities skyrocket at a pace never before experienced by them. They will have more fun, and the effects will snowball until they can play anything that they want, and the confidence built by experiencing successes early in life will set them up for success when they become older.

Play Loud. Be Heard.

Gavin F. Haley
Headmaster
Apex Guitar Institute