How to deal with difficult 5 year old student

[chequita]

Hi teachers and musicians,

I just started working as a piano teacher since 1 month ago. I just received a new 5 year old student from China. Since I'm from a multilingual country, I could speak a little bit of Chinese. So this isn't much of a problem.

What's problematic is that this student of mine lacks focus and doesn't pay attention or listen in class. Unwilling to play the piano, and complained to me that all the songs she plays in the class are the same, when the pieces are all different.

She's a beginner transfer student from another teacher, and she's using My First Piano Adventure (Book A Pre-reading without the writing book). The previous teacher told me that she's a very problematic student as well. I personally think that she's started to get bored of the book. And I do agree that piano adventure books are a little slow at the beginning. But during my first class with her, she couldn't even complete an old mac Donald song. She doesn'tshow any interest in the piano. I had to spend almost 10 minutes on a song that she played before. Any advice from teachers all around the world?

I am thinking of letting her use piano adventure primer level books and start again, or maybe advance to book B.

[awesom_o]

I like to show difficult 5 year olds a bit of juggling. Most kids like juggling, even if they do not like piano. When I explain that juggling helps with making progress on the piano, they tend to warm to it.

[pianoman53]

If you thought 5year olds had a great focus span, you were wrong. They usually can't focus on one thing for much more than 5 to 10 minutes. I would suggest you to always have some short games prepared, so that they can relax a bit between the tasks.
How long are the lessons? If they are private,they probably shouldn't be more than half an hour,if even that. And don't focus on only one thing.
 If he thinks all songs are the same, then change. If you have a young student, you'll have to adjust.