You have spent a significant amount of money on your child’s music education, from piano lessons to purchasing a piano. Has it ever occurred to you that your child might not be appreciating music the way you had expected him to?
Many kids lost interest entirely and gave up after years of learning. This can be salvaged if parents had spotted the trailing of interest before it was too late to do anything. It is therefore important to identify if they have lost interest in piano playing.
Here are 3 signs that your kids display when they stressed and have a lack of interest.
1. They move around a lot instead of sitting down.
This happens almost all the time when kids get bored of homework. They tend to move around, not sit still and rest their heads on the table. At the piano, they would be getting off the chair to move around before going back to play a few more bars, then get off again. They are telling you that they don’t actually want to be playing the piano but are being forced to.
2. They hit the keys too hard.
Sometimes they hit the keys as if they are playing percussion or deliberately playing much louder than usual. They can do that by hitting notes randomly or just whacking through a piece of music that they are supposed to practice. The objective is to create noise and show discontent. Something has to be wrong if you are hearing noise. It’s music that they are supposed to make.
3. They don’t play often.
Kids will find all sorts of reasons to avoid practicing or playing the piano. Reasons like “not feeling well” or “need to do my homework” are some of the more justifiable ones. It may be true once in a while. But if it happens all the time, it is highly likely to be fake excuses.
What should you do?
So when you realize your kids to be having these “symptoms”, what should you do?
From our experience, the fault largely lies with the teacher. Most kids that dropped learning disliked their teacher.
Why? The kid loses interest fast if the teacher is not good enough, or rather not a good match with your kid. Acting as a role model and probably the only source of piano related knowledge to your kid, the teacher plays an immensely important role in influencing the ideas and impression of piano playing that your kid has.
So, make sure your kids like their piano teacher. If they don’t, this is definitely the problem. You will have to find a better piano teacher who is more qualified and has a teaching style that is suitable.
That said, this might not be true for all. Some kids just don’t have any interest in music to begin with. They probably have talent in some other skills and waiting to be discovered.
In any case, identifying your kids’ lack of interest is still important to ensure that your time and money used for hiring a teacher and buying a piano is well spent.