Little Grace

Little Grace

Grace's Mum had already called me one and a half years ago. Grace was just five and her mother asked me whether she could start piano lessons.

"Well, that depends. Is there someone already playing in the family?" "No".

"Can she already understand ABC, can she read a little bit?"

"Oh yes, she is quite clever and I am reading every day with her".

Nevertheless it was decided to wait a little bit until she approached 7 years. You see, a piano is very much an instrument built for an adult human being. There are no ¼ size pianos to start learning like a violin and the hand should be developed accordingly.

It is all right usually when someone already plays in the family and the child really can't be stopped and then only in small time units, because of the small attention span.

Hence children of five years old having mastered Bach's Chiacone are really very rare. But now it was time for Myra and she had insisted on her first lesson. Ok!

What's got a Mum to do, to ensure that the weekly lesson fee is not wasted?

There are a few tips here:

• It is all right for Mum to sit in, provided she does not try to explain what the teacher is saying.
• Having a one to one lesson is for a child really an experience in communication and the child should develop the skill to say anything and ask the teacher herself: “Oh, i did not get that”.
• You can’t expect from a child from the very beginning the discipline to play every day a little bit. It needs a some help to do this.
• When the child does his/her practise It needs to become aware that indeed he/she can do this very well.
• Tell you child after the practise that you could hear it from the kitchen and it sounded SO good. Until it becomes part of the identity of the child. ‘I play the piano!”.