Older adult student with memory problems

[melissa222]

I've recently started teaching a student in her 80s who used to play piano in her youth, but hadn't touched a piano in decades until just recently. She clearly has some trouble with memory, and that's presenting some challenges. She told me at first that she wasn't really interested in improving, and she just wanted to have fun playing the right hand of songs she knows and likes, so we did a few weeks of very laid-back lessons where we'd work our way through "popular" books with her playing the right hand and me playing the left. She got frustrated, though, and ended up telling me that she would like to improve after all. I had her get a method book for adult beginners mainly for scale and chord practice. I never intended to make her work through the whole book--for one thing, she still remembers enough about the piano that some of it is too basic for her, and secondly, playing through an entire method book just isn't fun for someone whose stated goal is just enjoy herself at the piano in whatever time she has left. However, even though every week I only assign her a few exercises and tell her NOT to play through the whole method book, just to spend 2-3 minutes at the beginning of each practice session working on that week's exercises, she still always comes in feeling very frustrated, and telling me that she played through the whole method book, but it's boring and she wants to do something different. I feel just awful, because I picture her at home wasting hours playing through the whole method book every week, and I don't know how to help her. I suggested that we photocopy the pages she needs to work on each week, and her driver would hold onto the book so she wouldn't actually have it in the house and wouldn't be tempted to play the whole thing, but she rejected that idea because she doesn't like playing from photocopies. I suggested that she leave a note by the piano reminding herself not to play through the whole book, but she vetoed that, too. I don't want to completely abandon the book, because I really do believe that just a few minutes a day of chord exercises will help her immensely, but I really hate the idea of her sitting at home playing through the entire darn method book and hating every minute of it! Any suggestions?

[m1469]

Put a sticky note to flag the page and ex. # she starts on which reads "start here", then post a sticky over an exercise you don't want her to start that reads "STOP" (draw a stop sign ... draw a police car nearby, ready to pull her over  ).  You can just reuse the stickies each week, moving them to where you need them to be.

[mahlermaniac]

How are things going with your elderly student?