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Guilt Is The Wrong Way To Buy Attention
Lesson 20: Guilt Is The Wrong Way To Buy Attention
Paying attention is the essence of playing the piano. When you see a master pianist’s hands flying over the piano, the artist is paying attention to a myriad of details, muscular, musical and mental. The child must focus attention in a very intense way. Some kids like it and some kids find it very hard to grasp, much less embrace. How do you get a child to focus in this intense way, at the piano specifically?
Interest Produces Attention
Many piano teachers have great difficulty answering this question with any word other than “guilt.” That’s right, piano teachers buy attention with guilt. They make the child feel guilty, most of all, for not practicing as they should. It is demanded that they deliver advancement on the very homework they have not done.
Unless the child is extraordinarily inspired and gifted, it will only take a few weeks of the “guilt” regime before they simply give up on the piano in an emotional sense. It may then take months for them to admit this to you, the parent. “Piano is too hard, and I’m just stupid.” That’s exactly what I’ve heard kids say. How demoralized do you have to be to utter such an untruth?
Piano Is Easy
Try Praise And Humor
There is only one way to counteract guilt. Praise. This is difficult for most piano teachers because children’s difficulties with utterly basic skills secretly frustrates almost all piano teachers. They wish the child would go faster. But instead, the piano teacher should be fascinated with what EXACTLY makes that child have difficulty with that particular skill. You, as a teacher, should launch an intelligent, compassionate search for a way to teach that particular child the skill that is needed.
No Child Wants To Fail
The reason for your patience is that no child seeks out failure at the piano. The piano is often made unattainable to children by the teacher’s pointlessly elevated standards. The key element these kids lack is confidence, brought about by constant and repeated failure to scale the teacher’s rigid curriculum.
Begin by evaluating the child’s general motor skill and mental acuity levels. Do they have the following basic skills? Can they:
- Distinguish left from right?
- Understand up and down at the keyboard?
- Distinguish the fingers from one another?
- Demonstrate awareness of the pattern of 2 and 3 in the black keys?
If they do not have these skills, they will be unable to begin to acquire the finer skills that beginning piano requires.
Don’t Start With Reading Music
You’d be surprised how many young piano teachers fail to make the above observations and launch immediately into reading music. You need to delay formal study until the above list is, if not mastered, at least broached. If you do not delay, the child may simply not grasp the nature of the “musical task.”
The best course, in the above example, is to use games at the piano to teach the needed skills. This you must do at the child’s pace. The piano is remarkably suited to learning these skills and perceptions (up/down, left/right, etc.) It’s pointless to rush a child’s perception of anything. You can prepare for it, you can nurture it with hopes for the future, but you cannot rush it. Children have a way of learning things when they are good and ready.
Thus, guilt is really completely unnecessary. If you make a child feel guilty for slow progress, the real reason for the child’s “failure” is the teacher’s ignorance and impatience. Any child can learn the rudiments of the piano if you go slowly enough and make it enjoyable. No exceptions, even for kids with disabilities, both medically and attitude-wise.
A joyous piano student, regardless of skill level, is the product of a patient and wise piano teacher. A guilty piano student bears the mark of an impatient teacher.
COURSE ONE: TEACHING TOOLS
#2 WHAT A CHILD SHOULD EXPECT FROM PIANO LESSONS
#3 WHAT IS FINGERING AND WHEN DO WE USE IT
#4 PIANO BY NUMBER AND OTHER STARTING METHODS
#6 MINUTE BY MINUTE PIANO LESSON
#7 TOYS AND ACCESSORIES FOR FUN PIANO LESSONS
#8 READING MUSIC FOR KIDS STEP BY STEP
#9 THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN WORST AND BEST TEACHER
#10 A CHILD’S CLASSICAL MUSIC LISTENING LIST
COURSE TWO: TEACHING BACKGROUND
#11 A SHORT HISTORY OF THE PIANO
#12 A SHORT HISTORY OF PIANO METHODS
#13 A PLEASANT PIANO LESSON ATMOSPHERE
#14 ADVICE TO A YOUNG PIANO TEACHER
#16 A PIANO TEACHER’S EMOTIONS
#17 PACE AND CHILDREN’S PIANO LESSONS
#18 CHILDREN’S PIANO MOTOR SKILLS DEFINED BY AGE
#19 CHILDREN’S PIANO FINGERING OVERVIEW
#20 GUILT IS THE WRONG WAY TO BUY ATTENTION
COURSE THREE: PIANO GAMES
#21 FOURS, A PIANO COUNTING GAME
#24 THE USE OF HUMOR IN PIANO LESSONS
#25 HAPPY OR SAD: EAR TRAINING FOR KIDS
#26 FOLLOW THE LEADER: VISUAL PIANO GAMES
#27 PIANO GAMES TO PLAY WHEN ALL GOES WRONG
#28 PRECURSOR SKILL PIANO GAMES
