This is a very interesting discussion we have here ...
I was self-taught in reading music and play the recorder. When I was 6 years old, my older sister got lessons at school. She and her friend used to practice in our home, and I was standing by, bursting with envy because I wanted to play as well. Whenever I got the chance I borrowed her little recorder and played myself. I got my own recorder as a Christmas gift that year. The beginner's books they used were easy to follow so I learned to read music rather quickly. No, I was not exactly a progidy, I had to struggle a lot with the technique and the older girls laughed a bit at me and my clumsy attempts, but I learned. Later on I played treble recorder with the ensemble at the music school and we made many, many performances, also at the local radio station.
But we did not have a piano. I wanted to play the piano so badly. The recorder is a delightful little instrument, especially since I got my wonderful treble companion in pear wood, which I still keep here in my home. But it is very restricted. The piano ... to me it was, and is, the king of all instruments. You can play anything on it. You can be a complete orchestra on your own. It is beautiful and impressing, it has all the tones you can ask for, and you can play four hands and even more on it, you can sing along while you play ... everything.
So I got piano lessons, finally, thanks to my teacher in the recorder ensemble who thought I had some talent and "put a word" for me. Otherwise the waiting list for piano lessons was incredibly long.
When I got that first piano lessons, with just a few hours notice, I still did not own a piano ... I went there, full of anticipation, and my teacher showed me how to sit and how to use my fingers, and I got the Hanon exercise No. 1 as first assignment. I had no idea it was Hanon, in fact I learned last year (!) the name of what I played back in 1976. But then I got a piano and we bought the beginner's books for me, and I flew through them like nothing because I was such an eager student and I already knew the basics, yes!
Now, this is not a story of me sky-rocketing to the stars, sorry. My first enthusiasm faded away and I became the average student who never wanted to practice and so on. But decades later, when I was ready to analyze what happened, it occurred to me that: "it did not have to be like this". I clearly saw the anomaly in me, on one hand, being so in love with playing the piano, and on the other hand, being so bored by practicing and learning.
So on my own, I developed a method to keep my motivation up instead of killing it, and it worked. I call it the dog method as I learned it from my dog ... You see, dogs don't learn and they don't work unless they feel motivated. We call it "having fun" but from the comments above here I got reminded that this expression has been misinterpreted during the last years. There is a common belief that kids today are just expecting to be entertained at school, so they don't learn to struggle and therefore they don't learn at all. Well, "having fun" IS NOT EQUAL to "being entertained".
Like many others, I sometimes go to the gym. I wonder how many gym visitors that feel entertained at the gym, or think that the exercises as such are "fun". Yet, most of us enjoy being there. We enjoy to get sweaty, feel some pain, feel exhausted ... huh? Can sit-ups be fun, ever? No, and yes. People who regularly go to the gym often do it because they feel good about it. They love the results they see over time. They even love the feeling of having had a tough workout, despite that is it quite uncomfortable while they do it. And the process with piano practice is about the same. I also sigh and swear at the piano sometimes. I also struggle and want to bang my forehead to the keys when things just don't seem to work. But nothing beats the satisfaction when I feel that I have conquered yet another "impossible" obstacle. Besides the problem solving is, like I have already written, good for my concentration. I get calm and forget about other annoying things in my life for a while. I allow myself to forget the rest of the world.
Fun? Oh yes. But just like my dog I need to be motivated. I need to be aware of WHY I endure some moments of frustration and pain. So "boring" IS NOT EQUAL to "painful" either.
In that aspect, yes, kids today also need to have fun when they learn, or else they will not learn at all. My dogs never learn unless they see the point (which at first can be a treat, but later on it gets more advanced). And they get tired very quickly, they need to take many breaks. They need to make progress. That is, you have to construct goals that are easy to achieve, in other words, lots of micro goals. But if I respect this mechanism, they are the most excellent, enthusiastic students in the world.
It is sad that we have this belief about fun=easy entertainment today. I know why this idea of having fun came from - it was a reaction to the idea that all you need is a lot of self-discipline, and that you win nothing unless you torture yourself. No, you don't. Self-discipline is an illusion. You cannot work against your own instincts in long terms. If your instincts tell you that this is pointless, you will escape from it in one way or the other.
But you need to learn that the best rewards may not be instant, that hard work can be very satisfying. Having said that, I still emphasize that you need to have fun, or else you will get tired of the whole thing and give up. And I don't think being lazy is fun at all.
Topic: Hello: newcomers, this one is for you