How to teach my daughter piano

[elota]

I'm play a bit of piano and i've been trying to teach my daughter who is six (6) since the last one year but we haven't made much progress. The problem is that she seems interested but after abut 5 to 10 minutes into the lesson, she gets bored. I can't afford to send her to another teacher. i know music will come into handy and i really want her to learn. So any tips from anyone who has gone through the same problem?

[slane]

I am teaching my 7 year old daughter. I expect her to do 10 mins a day. Anything after that is a bonus. Perhaps you could expect 10 mins when your daughter is 7 but less at the moment?
My daughter doesn't get bored, she gets tired after 10 mins. Also, I can't expect her to play a piece over and over and focus on mistakes the way an adult would. She would get bored if I insisted on that.

[elota]

Thank you sooooo.......... much. After reading reply, I'm feeling like I'm the worst mother/piano teacher in the world cos today we spent about 20 minutes and I was almost shouting at her the whole time . Thanks again . Any more tips would be really appreciated.

[lostinidlewonder]

If you really have only a short amount of time and not much experience teaching piano, then you should perhaps search for easy piano pieces where both her hands plays in single positions. Get her to start reading the numbers to tell her which fingers she should use as well as being able to notice the notes moving up or by different intervals after covering up all the fingering. This will allow her to play more pieces without having to depend on muscular memory. Keeping it fast paced is good and it is important for her to get good sight reading practice early on. Once she becomes familiar with single position pieces move onto pieces which have two or more positions, not too many more. The more the hand has to move around the more difficult it is for the beginner to learn to read and play. You can train her in the building blocks of music like Chords and scales which will allow her to understand changing positions better. You must get her to look at playing the piano in terms of positions not individual notes and individual fingers, Hanon might also be a good simple tool to teach group playing and control.

You should get her sight reading lots and lots of simple pieces, do not think you need to push her too far in terms of difficulty or fast, the experience gained from sighting simple pieces is invaluable and if you can get her into the habit of playing the piano without looking at her hands while her eyes are fixed on the score, you set her up for good learning habits. She might get bored if you choose boring sounding pieces, so choosing the right pieces is important, perhaps play through a couple with her and ask her which ones she likes the sounds of best. Sometimes simple books have pictures in them that she can spend time afterwards to color in with you, she might then be interested to play these pieces because the pictures might be a source of inspiration.

Also, teaching your own children is EXTREMELY difficult. I know this from a different point of view, when I taught my mother piano for 3 years I had her crying in a lessons once, she told me I was a slave driver! It was only because I never tell my mum what to do in family life, but in lessons I was putting her through tough trials! Your kids might react the same, because how they relate to you outside of teaching is very different during teaching, it can be very difficult to change modes. Often when you teach your children it is in a nagging mode or telling them off mode, it might feel like that when you teach your daughter so you need to really think about how to guide her emotionally away from this.

[quantum]

Six is still a young age.  You must realize that children have a very different perception of time than adults do.  What to you may be 10 minutes of a simple music lesson, may seem like 5 hours of calculus homework to them.  Aim for short bursts of activity with bite sized pieces of information that are easily digestible.  Children at this age like to change focus frequently, thus long sessions tend to make their minds disinterested. 

At this age, fostering their interest in music is much more important than tackling the technicalities of playing the instrument. 

I must agree with Lost regarding teaching your own children.  The kinship relations between you and your child make it difficult to distinguish what is being a parent and what is being a teacher.  What may at first seem like a money-saving tactic may turn out to pose much greater challenges than initially thought out.  My recommendation nonetheless is to locate a piano teacher. 

[slane]

In my limited experience of teaching my one and only child, the important thing is to have "zero emotional buy-in". You must treat her as if she's a stranger's child. You wouldn't yell at some else's child right? And you must let go of all thoughts that her progress somehow reflects on you as a parent. You mustn't compare her to any other kids progress either. Nor must you set expectations as to how fast she's going to get through the method book. Its much better to introduce her to a wide range of simple pieces from many sources, rather than racing through the method in any case.

Of course your child is not going to treat you with the respect that she treats a stranger and sometimes our sessions get pretty tempetuous! Playing with her elbows and other crazy things, just to prove a point. But if its musical, or she's exploring the keyboard then that's OK with me. Tomorrow will be OK for the proper stuff.

Concentrate on her attitude to learning, rather than the progress she makes at the piano. If people ask I don't say "my daughter is a wonderful pianist" i say "she has a wonderful attitude to learning" and hopefully B leads to A.

Try not to let the whole lesson be corrections. This is very hard! One strategy is, if she say, stuffed up the rhythm yesterday, tell her what you expect before she plays and then don't worry about correcting notes and fingering until tomorrow. If she doesn't "get it" you need to break the problem down. Get her to sing the piece first. Sing the piece all the time yourself, in the car, getting dinner etc. If there are no words, make them up! Get her to play one note and count the rhythm, so she doesn't have to worry about reading and fingering while she figures that out. Clap the rhythm  etc. etc.

Try to notice the good things, even if they are not perfect. "Your fingering was much better today". "your tone was very nice". "That was pretty". etc.

Ah its a fascinating exercise teaching your own daughter. A learning experience for both of us.

[elota]

Thanks. Slane and Lost. Tried ur advice... and we are keeping the lessons to 5 minutes a day. And also the tip about teaching your own child as if she were a stranger's daughter is very useful.

[dahmin]

I also teach my daughter (age 9) piano at home.  Discipline and interest are important.  She has a timetable each day for the studies she needs to do (English, Maths, Chinese, Music etc...).  So she follows the routine and hours that need to be put into the practice. 

Try playing duos with her.  Children love playing duos   We play both classical and jazz duos together.  It's a lot of fun.