It’s a familiar story - Mother and child arrive for
their violin lesson and Mother announces, “Well, Johnny didn’t want to practice
this week and I just didn’t have the heart to force him. I want music to be an enjoyable experience
for him.” Usually Mother adds on a tag
about her own experience, “I remember how I had to sit at the piano while my
friends were playing outside. I just
hated it.”
What
follows is a woeful violin lesson because Johnny has inadequately learned last
week’s skills and is therefore not ready to progress to anything new. The lesson he has learned is not, “music is
enjoyable,” but, “this is something I don’t have to do. Mommy won’t make me.”
Mother
wants her child to have an enjoyable experience making music. But how enjoyable can it be if approached
with a casual, sporadic, “we’ll do it when we feel like it” attitude? How enjoyable can it be if the child cannot
do it well due to lack of practice?
Children
are perceptive; they intuit Mother’s conflicting feelings about practice and
figure, “Here’s something she won’t make me do.” But there are many things a child does every
day simply because they are part of the daily routine: eating, brushing teeth,
bathing, and going to school. Listening
and practice should be every bit as much a part of the daily routine as eating
lunch and brushing teeth. Finding a time
of day that is just for violin, a time when the child is alert and the home
relatively free of distraction is a good way to start. Sometimes it takes a bit of creative juggling
on the part of Suzuki families to come up with such a time. Some rise a little early and practice before
the school bus comes. Some practice
after a light snack and a short rest after school. Some practice immediately after meals. Some take advantage of a relaxed time before
bed to practice (some children enjoy the feeling that they are “staying up
late” to practice). The important thing
is finding a time that the child knows is violin time and not for
anything else.
“Well,
we’ve established a practice time,” says Mother, “but Johnny dawdles so. It takes us forever to get everything ready,
let alone get down to the business of practicing!”
I
remember Dr. Suzuki’s prescription for practice, “Two minutes with love, five
times a day.” The emphasis, especially
in the beginning, is not the amount of time but the quality of time, as
expressed by the words “with love.” But
children, particularly young ones, have to be taught the value of quality time. To a small child with an undeveloped sense of
time, practice can feel like a long road stretching to infinity. And so it can feel to the mother who has to
deal with a balky dawdling child!
To
these mothers I suggest using a technique I learned while teaching with Sue
Schreck in Norfolk.
Use
a timer.
But
Mother remembers sitting through an obligatory daily half-hour obediently
hammering away while the clock ticks off the monotonous minutes. “Not that,” she groans.
No,
not that. Instead, set the timer for a
child’s length of time...three to five minutes.
Use a kitchen timer or egg timer, something with a visible or audible
“Time’s up.”
“But
we’ll never get anything done in five minutes!” says Mother. At this point it is useful for the teacher to
demonstrate a five minute session. It is
very revealing to both the parent and teacher to try this exercise in efficient
usage of time and it’s amazing how much can be accomplished! But in a sense, Mother is right. If a strict rule-“You only get five minutes
to practice”- is set and practice is ended with a bow the instant the timer
goes off, there will be very little done the first few times. But little by little the child’s attitude
reverses itself.
Four-year-old
Davey insisted on taking ten minutes getting his violin, bow, rosin, etc. out
and lining them up on the floor before even preparing to play. After being given a five minute limit which
included getting ready and practicing, he continued to dawdle. When the timer rang, he had only rosined his
bow. Mother calmly said, “Ok, time’s up,
put it away.” This took Davey by
surprise. He had gotten used to Mother’s
nagging and pleading and this was something new. He put everything away. The second day the same thing happened. The third day it happened again, but as he
put his violin away, he said, “Mom, when do we get to play a song?” Calmly and without trying to force blame on
him, Mother replied, “The practice time is all used up. You know, we only get five minutes. Maybe if you get ready really fast when we
practice tomorrow, you’ll have time to play.”
The next day Mother calmly reminded him and Davey got the violin ready a
little faster but not fast enough to have time to play a song. The timer rang. Davey burst into tears. Mom helped him put the violin away without
scolding, simply reminding him that he would get another chance tomorrow. She remained unmoved by his tears, neither
blaming Davey, nor giving in to him. The
next day she gently reminded him to get ready fast. Davey did, and had time to play a song.
The
timer performs two functions in reversing the attitude towards practice. First, it turns practice from an infinite
weary journey into a finite entity. The
child knows there is a beginning and end to it. Second, by setting up a rule saying, “You only
get five minutes,” practice time changes from something that is imposed on
a child to something that is valuable and not to be wasted. The child learns to value the time and use it
well.
I
have used the timer with several willful children who manipulate their parents
by means of power plays, dawdling or rebellion.
In every case where the system was used carefully, the problem of
practice was reversed in anything from a few days to a few weeks.
It
sometimes helps for Mother and child to keep a chart together with a visible
and tangible record of successful practice.
Mother soon returns to the lesson with praise for a child who is not
only cooperative but eager to practice.
The child notices that practice is a lot more fun now that Mom is no
longer nagging or scolding, and proudly displays his chart to the teacher. And eventually, the welcome day arrives when
the child announces that he really needs more practice time!
JoAnne M. Legg
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