Why Your Child Isn't Practicing Piano...

Hey parents, today we're discussing a topic that's really close to my heart, and that is how you as parents can support your kid's piano education best at home. This video is especially relevant for parents with limited or no musical training, who want their kids to take piano lessons seriously, but are unsure of how to guide them aside from just saying, go practice piano. I want to give you parents five specific tips to try at home, so that you can not just be more informed, but also more involved in your kids' beautiful piano journey. Tip number one is to ask genuine and specific questions about their piano lessons. Ask your kid about what they learned in today's piano lesson. Encourage them to share their achievements as well as their struggles. As someone who's taught piano for 10 years, I can see from first-hand experience that parents who show this genuine interest for their kids' piano lessons, makes the kid feels like there is someone else that's on this journey with me that I'm not so lonely. They know what I'm doing and it helps keep my enthusiasm high. At a very basic level, you can ask your kids about the title of the pieces they're working on, just to even know what they're called. So next time at like a family or social gathering, let's say your kid wants to play something, you can go, oh, why don't you play a little river that you've been working on for the past two weeks? You know, just showing them that you're aware of what they're working on, helps them to feel like their work is validated, and that piano is a family thing rather than just like a myself kind of thing. Ask them about maybe what they're struggling in their pieces. Let's say there's a piece called My Little River, you can ask them, oh, so what's difficult about this piece? And maybe their response might be, oh, you know, the middle section is really hard, there is this really fast chromatic note section that I'm trying to work on. Asking your kids about their struggles with their piano pieces or songs, will yield two benefits in my opinion. The first benefit is that you get to be informed about where they're going through it. You help them to feel like you're sharing the struggle, and you help them to feel like they're not alone. The second benefit I think it yields, is that you're getting your kid to verbalize their thinking. Piano can be a really introspective solo kind of task. So sometimes we have a lot of conscious or subconscious thoughts that are just really messy and stuck in our head. And I think through just verbalizing, okay, there is a difficult middle section that has a lot of chromatic notes, even just verbalizing it out, can help make the problem more visible, and more like, oh, that's a real problem. It's a real problem in reality, which can then help them to notice that problem, and to fix that problem more effectively. And whatever response your kid tells you, if I can give you a piece of advice, is to remember what they said, and to ask them about it in following days or weeks. I think even though your kid is kind of the subject expert in the house, they're still children and they seek your mentorship. And even though you may not know the specific struggles they're going through, just having that oversight, and for them to know that you know what they're going through, will help them to keep on task much, much better, as compared to another household where the parent just says something like, oh, go practice, without any interest in what actually goes on in that half an hour or 45 minutes of your kid practicing. I think kids rise to the level of expectations of their parents. So if you say, go practice, they'll just kind of go and pass off that 30 minutes or 45 minutes kind of mindlessly. But if you ask them specific things, it's almost like you're priming them to practice more effectively. Parent tip number two is to create a musical environment at home. In my opinion, listening to music is just as important as playing music. I encourage parents to think about their kids learning piano or music in the same lens that they think about their kids learning another language. Now, whether that's English or a second language like Japanese, German, or Indonesian, the best way to learn a language is immersion. This is a really easy thing to do. Turn on the TV, turn on your speakers, and just play some background music. If you want, I've even worked with a parent who actually turns on the piano music that the kids are learning in the background when they're at home. And the really interesting thing is that kid, I remember, learns his pieces really, really quickly because he heard it all the time at home, whilst he was studying, whilst he was doing other chores. It's just in the background exposing itself to you. And you know that in language learning, or let's say piano for that matter, there's a lot to be said about this kind of background and passive kind of learning. I advise parents to not make piano a separate activity that your kid feels like there are no relevance to other parts in life. Try to create a musical life for your kid. And I think playing and practicing piano will fit really nicely into that picture. This is reflecting on my own experience too. When I was younger, I used to listen to lots of music and watch lots of movies that, you know, come with good soundtracks. And I used to fall in love with pieces all the time. And the routine of listening to music and falling in love with music, there was always a new project or a new piece for me to work on. The novelty of it all just helped me to have such a high motivation and it kept me learning for years and years and years. So a couple of recommendations I have is just to put on some background music in the house, whether that's studying, whether they're doing chores or whatever, just have some music in the background. Music is nice anyway. Music makes us feel good. If not for the educational goals, at least just put it on for a bit of, you know, well-being reasons. And the second suggestion I have is just to maybe research some good pieces or good movies with good piano music and try to consume those content. Create moments where your kid can exist in a musical world and fall in love with music. If this video is helpful for you, make sure you subscribe to Learn Piano with Jazerly. Tip number three is a common sense one, but extremely important. It is to establish a daily practice routine. You know, in the past, I've hosted student concerts where my students all come and they all have to play a solo piece. And as with any concerts, there'll be kind of one or two that will play outstanding pieces that just get all the attention from all the students and parents. I sometimes get parents come and ask, you know, how these kids play amazing pieces at such a young age. And contrary to what they think, it's not actually talent, but just sheer practice. Whenever you see an amazing performance, whether that's a five-year-old kid or a 50-year-old man, a good performance or just good mastery of the piano comes from dedicated daily practice. So what you're seeing when you see an amazing performance by some eight-year-old kid is not an overnight success. It's not talent. You're witnessing a system of minimally three, four, five years of daily hardcore practice. So I suggest parents to establish that sense of practice every day. Try to make your kid think like it's like brushing your teeth or going to school. It's just part of your day. Just do it. Just do your half an hour or 45 minutes or 60 minutes for the day and let that system work. You know, after a year or two, you're going to start to see some really, really significant results from that compared to other students who are practicing like a couple of times in the week because of social gatherings or other commitments. Parent tip number four is to provide a good instrument. This of course depends on your unique family budget, but a decent piano makes all the difference. If an acoustic piano is out of reach, a decent keyboard that has weighted keys will do just fine. I remember years ago, I was teaching a student. This student comes to my house every week and one of the weeks, mom was a little bit busy. So I decided, okay, I would go to their house. For me, it was interesting too. I get to go to another place and see and play another piano and just to see like what the home setup is like with practice. When I tested this student's piano, I got a huge shock. You know, the piano was old. The sound was extremely metallic. Instead of sounding something like... It was sounding like... For me, it just sounded really metallic, gross, and it didn't sound soothing at all. I can't imagine what it would have been like to practice on such a instrument for lengthy amounts of time. Not to mention the piano was not in tune as well. The piano was probably not tuned for one to two years. So anyways, their mom was mentioning to me before, why don't my kids naturally practice piano? Why do I always have to nag them? And the first advice I gave her was, you need to tune your piano. You need to make this toy an attractive piece of toy to play with. Reflecting on my story too, when I was a bit younger, I've seen many students, you know, when the budget allows, whether they upgrade to a nice keyboard with weighted keys or to a real acoustic piano, I always see this like almost huge improvement when they upgrade to another piano because buying another piano and having a nice sounding instrument just makes practice so much more rewarding and educational. You know, as piano students, we're trying to express something on the piano and to have something that can express what we want just goes a long way to keeping our motivation up. So if within your budget, try to get a decent piano for your kid. Tip number five for parents is to record your children's performances and watch it together. One of the most common comments I get from parents are, I don't have any musical experience, but I can tell something is wrong when my son or my daughter plays that song. As a parent, you probably want to help your kid to play better, but maybe you don't have the technical language to sort of guide them through it. I find recording their practice and watching it together can be a tremendously helpful activity because I'll tell you something, your kids are pretty smart. If they watch their performances, they will be able to spot which parts they do well and which parts need work. And rather than you telling them or their teacher telling them, they can actually tell themselves. I actually always aim to do this in piano lessons. I try never really to tell my students directly what they've done wrong. I find they often disengage and they don't really want to hear where they've gone wrong. Whereas if you just recorded a video and for them to assess themselves, you can ask them a starting question such as, okay, so let's say out of 10 points, how many points would you give yourself for this performance? And let's say they say, oh, maybe I'll give about a seven. You can then ask, oh, okay, seven's a good score. You know, why didn't you give yourself, let's say a four? And then your kid might tell you, oh, it's because I did this good and I did this right. And then your next question can be, well, why didn't you give yourself a nine? So why is it a seven? Why not a nine now? And then your kid will, you know, start to verbalize, think and verbalize about what are the things they can improve on. And the verbalizing of their struggles, I can promise you will just give them such a sense of ownership about their mistakes. And they're much, much more likely to go and try to fix them when they can see it and they can kind of diagnose their own problems themselves. So that's a really good tip I have for parents who don't have any musical training, but kind of want their kids to pay attention to their mistakes and to fix their mistakes. We've come to the end of this video. I'll catch you in our next tutorial over here.