Learning music is not a walk around the park. Let me tell you how it is as a mother and the 5 benefits of why I teach them piano.
Both my kids started playing the piano at 4 years old. Both started with “Mary Had a Little Lamb” with one finger. 4 years later Eleni is playing big pieces. But this is not the reason why I teach them piano. The process of learning piano gives us a perfect example in how to teach my kids determination, resilience, and setting goals. As I feel this is one of my foremost important asset to learn in life, I’m so relieved that I can practice this through the learning of piano. Of course everyone has different ways, and learning anything difficult will bring this out. Here are my top 5 reasons why I teach them piano.
- The Art of Practicing— this mean practicing a 5-6 notes trying to perfect it. Imagine when the piece is 10 pages long. You just need to take deep breathe and focus on a smaller scale rather than the goal of learning the entire piece. She practices 3 hours a day and more during audition/competition. But as we spend an enormous amount of time together targeting bar by bar, I learned that end of the week we have perfected a page. When you see the light at the end of the tunnel everything else just comes easier. Anything difficult takes time and determination. This is just life. Practice for anything is science.
- Competition– Both kids participates in many competitions and it is not because we want to showcase the winning trophies. The amount of stress that a young body needs to manage to perform requires a lot of control in your mind. Training self control. How often do we see adults that have no self control with their emotions. Being able to stay calm in whatever circumstances will definitely help succeeding it. Something I work along with the kids.
- It’s Okay to Make Mistakes– We all make mistakes. After practicing for days, weeks, even months the last thing you want to do is miss a note. But it is inevitable. During performances, kids need to have the ability to think fast and recover from that mistake and keep going. Their teacher always says, don’t stop just keep going. Not losing hope over a note and at the end we all forget about that silly mistake.
- Winner or Looser — Winning is a big part, feeling accomplished and proud after all those long hours of practice. But I mostly focus on the looser part of the competition or not making the part of an audition. Tears shed, lots of tears. Yes maybe even from me too. When you work so hard we all want to be rewarded. The biggest lesson of all is being able to understand the reasons and acknowledging that not everything turns out as you wish for. Why failure is good for success.
- Focus– In mathematics this word is defined as a fixed point. To stay fixated you need to learn to to stay concentrated. Like everything else I mentioned above it all requires practice.
We already know music helps the brain, but even those with brain injuries did you know that? “Music probably does something unique,” explains neuropsychologist Catherine Loveday of the University of Westminster. “It stimulates the brain in a very powerful way, because of our emotional connection with it.” This is such a powerful statement for me and you can read further on the brain development and how it helps its structure here.
If you have been on the fence in teaching your child music, go for it. It’s just another vitamin for your growing brain.
Sue
