Creating a musical child
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- October
- 24
My son’s trumpet blasts sounded like a wounded elephant writhing in pain when he first started playing an instrument in third grade. In fourth grade, he switched to the saxophone, and the elephant was healing. Now, in fifth, he’s developed quite a talent for it, and is visibly improving and enjoying his progress. It was all a matter of getting him over the initial hump of frustration  and continuing that progress. That’s kind of the problem.
The initial question for his mom and I was whether to let him give music a try in the first place. There are a number of tips lists online and in print, “including this one”:http://cnx.org/content/m11640/latest that serve as a guide for parents making the call. We didn’t consult a list at the time, although it would’ve been helpful. But my son had expressed an interest, and although we worried that he would decide not to stick with it, we let him go for it. I made it clear that he had to stick with it once he chose to do it, at least for the year. And some of his early practices took some prodding. But he stuck with it.
The problem is that practices are still an occasional hassle. He also started playing guitar last year, so there are two instruments to practice. I gave him the same speech for the guitar classes he takes, and he does practice. However, we have to force him to do so at times, and it makes me wonder if that defeats the purpose. I want him to want to practice, because I know the more he improves the more he will enjoy it. I’m going to start practicing guitar with him at least once a week, and perhaps that will help.
But is there a trick to this? Or do we just keep insisting on regular practices until it takes root as a regular routine?
This entry was posted
on Wednesday, October 24th, 2007 at 12:08 pm by Jorge Fitz-Gibbon.
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