My Heroes: Parents of Music Students

When I began teaching music (OK, OK, it was the middle of the last century, if you want to pin it down), parents dropped off the kid at the lesson and went shopping. Then, I became a Suzuki teacher and the parents were expected to stay in the room, silently take notes and practice at home with the child, trying to do things exactly as the teacher did at the lesson. This was totally traumatizing to me as a young teacher, completely insecure about how to handle being watched as I taught. We have evolved far beyond that point now and the presence and role of the parent is desired, recognized and celebrated.

Just as the understanding of how children learn has developed in the past thirty years, so has our understanding of the role parents play in their child’s development as a musician. That silent witness thing certainly worked better than not having the parents at the lesson at all. Yet the weakness of this model showed up most clearly to me at lessons where the parent seemed to be disrupting the lesson constantly, either with too many questions or with inappropriate comments.

The opening phase of the lesson was for the teacher to bow with the child, indicating that now no irrelevant conversation was to take place between teacher and parent. The lesson has begun and the entire focus is on the child’s learning. But it began to dawn on me that parents were feeling left out of the process and they needed inclusion and recognition as being there and alive and contributing. So I began to include the parent in the bow and to say to the child that the bow was to acknowledge respect and thanks for everyone involved in helping the student learn (including the child’s efforts). The more I acknowledged the contribution of the parent during the lesson, the less disruptive anyone became.

I began to see that celebrating a child’s victory over some task was enhanced when we included the parent’s contribution in helping the child achieve it. I look on it as engendering the child’s awareness of how much the teamwork is part of the process. Not only is it good for mom’s (or whoever the practicing person is) self-esteem, it allows the child to see that others respect and value mom as well.

Parents do so much for their children all the time and in every dimension. Apart from the obvious duties to provide food, shelter and clothing, the loving, generous nature of parents prompts them to make every effort to provide additional experiences such as music lessons and sport. They provide money, time, energy and, most of all commitment.

We weren’t too far along in the phase of lessons for my children when I realized that if we had not had a good practicing week, it was never because my kids were reluctant to practice. It was because I had not made the effort to create the practice time (at that stage, the kids were too small to be expected to go and practice without my presence). Over time, it dawned on me that in order for a child to develop the habit of perseverance (another name for self-discipline), that habit had to be modeled for them. If i wanted them to learn to do something every single day, I had to make it happen every single day for them. Heavy, man (as they say).

Every time I witness the results of this dedication on the part of the parents, I become slightly weak in the knees with admiration and gratitude. Learning how to play the piano is a multi-year (one could even say, life-long) process. It takes time, focus, repetition and training to develop the mental and physical skills that permit the rapid responses to execute the navigation of the keyboard and then to go beyond that to create the magic of an emotional experience that music so readily elicits. Parents create the environment for the children, practice with them, take them to lessons, pay lots of money, nurture, love and support through thick and thin so that the children can say, ultimately, “I did it all myself”. Funny thing is, the parents are totally thrilled!

That is why parents of music students are my heroes.