How Musicians Can Use Gretchen Rubin’s Four Tendencies to Accomplish Their Goals

This post is part of a series on the blog about helping teens succeed in music. You can read last week’s article about 20 Ways to Encourage Your Teen in Music HERE.

I am a huge fan of Gretchen Rubin’s work, especially her newest book all about the Four Tendencies. If you’re not familiar with this idea, this is the author’s framework to explain the four ways people respond to expectations placed on them, either by themselves or others.

Once I realized what my own tendency was, according to Gretchen Rubin’s definitions, it made a huge difference in how I was able to work with myself to meet my own goals and to understand my reaction to the expectations others placed on me.

For musicians, there are all sorts of expectations we encounter from teachers, parents, conductors, and from ourselves.

Understanding how we naturally respond, and how we can work with themselves to reach goals, and requirements we must meet, is a huge advantage. It helps us in music and every other area of our lives too.

The link to take Gretchen Rubin’s Four Tendency Quiz is HERE

Based on Gretchen Rubin’s great book on the subject I want to share each tendency and some ideas for musicians to work with their tendency to meet their musical goals.

20 Ways to Support Your Teen in Music

For some ideas to help teens who are struggling to practice because of too much homework – you can read my article: Teens, Practice & Too Much Homework

It can be hard to know how to support our teens once they are old enough to practice on their own. They may seem like they don’t need us, as their parents, to be involved anymore. What I found, after parenting two teens, is that they actually need our support more than ever. It just may look different than how we supported them when they were younger.

It’s easy to focus on areas where our teens need to improve, and where they still need to grow and mature. It’s harder, but even more important to notice the areas where they are doing amazing things and point them out to our children over and over. Your teen may not always remember exactly what you said, but they will remember the feeling of being supported. Every single kid needs that in their lives, and not just for music.

Here are 10 Positive Things to Say to Support Your Teen

I’m proud of you.
I love hearing you play.
I can see how hard you’re working.
Growing up is hard.
You’re still learning – it will get easier.
I’m so impressed you are making time to keep playing.
Your dedication inspires me.
How can I help?
It takes a lot guts to get up there and play.
I can see you improving.

Communicating in the Middle School Years

The middle school years can have their challenges. This article is first in a series about teaching & parenting music students during the teen years.

Middle school is both a wonderful age and a challenging age.

In my parent talks, I always start talking about this age group by saying:

Never before has your child needed more positivity and encouragement, and never before has it been so hard challenging to do so.

This isn’t true for every child, all the time. But in general, this is the age where students start to strive more for independence. They also start to become more concerned with what their peers think (rather than their parents).

This is a normal part of their development. Rather than be offended at these changes, we can work with where they are developmentally.

For further reading I recommend reading this article about how to motivate middle school students http://www.teachhub.com/how-motivate-students-tips-middle-schoolers

Here are a few things I think really help when communicating with our middle school children and students:

1.Keep it positive

If parents and their children are arguing about practice at home at this age, I encourage parents to let me know right away. I think it is wise to let the teacher be the one who delivers constructive feedback. As a parent, I encourage you to stick to positive and supportive comments. Your relationship with your child is more important than a perfect practice session.

Why Conferences with Teens Are So Important

Last Week's Blog post discussed why every studio should hold Parent-Teacher Conferences - you can read the article HERE. This week I want to address the importance of holding conferences with teens. In my studio I use part of a lesson each spring (this is happening in the next couple of weeks in my studio) to have a conference with each teen student on their own to honestly talk about how things are going, what they are enjoying and struggling…