5 Practice Tips for Supporting Young Musicians from Christine Goodner

This article is based on this week’s Time to Practice Podcast, episode 12. Christine Goodner is sharing tips about practice on the podcast this week. It has been edited a bit for ease of reading. You can listen to the audio through your favorite podcast platform or through the link below.

This week I’m sharing some ideas with you that I think help make home practice more successful and doable. Especially if you’re an adult:  parent, grandparent, or practice mentor of any kind, and you work with a young music student in your life.

I have five ideas I wanted to share with you this week, from my own experience as a teacher and parent.

Make it a Habit

The first thing I wanted to share today is not the most exciting perhaps, but it is what families have shared with me as the most important thing that has helped make practice work in their family. And that is: be consistent and have a routine.

Again, that’s not a very exciting thing to think about doing, but when we are in the habit of practicing day in and day out, we are more likely to make it happen with less resistance.

When practice is not something on our to-do list that we need to remember, but rather something we do every day it often feels strange not to do it – like buckling our seatbelt, or brushing our teeth before we go to bed, or other habits you may think of that you have in your life.

It’s the act of having a habit that helps us get our practice done. And, it’s the daily routine of coming back to our instrument that helps us improve our skills and get better.

So I encourage you to take a look at practice at your house. Do you have a routine?

In Oregon, we have just been back to school for a few weeks this fall as I’m writing this. And it’s a great time of year to create a new routine for practice. Also we can think about all the new routines we’re establishing and how music fits into that for us.

In 2018, I did an informal research project with over a hundred parents and family members who practiced with young children and you can read more about that HERE. And this is the number one thing they said helped them make music, lessons and music practice work in their lives – being consistent and having a routine.

Have a Schedule

This tip may also feel less than exciting but it’s also extremely important but the second most important tip I like to give, especially this time of year, is having a schedule for when you’re going to practice each day of the week.

If we join a team and play sports, we usually have a game or competition of some sort. It was often on the weekend thinking back to my own kids growing up. Then the coach schedules practices throughout the week. And we can get used to that routine as families who are supporting young children doing activities.

What we may not really realize at first is that when our children signed up for music lessons, they have the actual lesson with their teacher once a week. But then it’s up to us as the family to schedule the practice throughout the week. Especially if our children are young and are not able to, or don’t understand how to, schedule these things on their own.

We as the family (and the student themselves depending on their age) are responsible for figuring out when to practice. Even doing a little bit every day for musicians is really important.

So we need to think through “how can I get this in every day humanly possible?” It’s a great time of year to think about this.

When are we going to practice on Mondays?

When are we going to practice on Tuesdays?

Really looking at our schedule and thinking about windows of time when the instrument can come out, or you can sit at the instrument, or if you’re a vocalist, when you can practice singing.

When will you do this keeping in mind that it’s up to us as the family members, supporting young students to help create that schedule?

Remind Your Child to Practice

The next tip I want to share is for students who need reminders that it’s time to practice. I get this question all the time when I’m doing talks for groups of families and parents and I always like to share the story that my own parents had to remind me to practice all the way through high school.

I loved playing. I loved being in ensembles and going to youth orchestra. I was not good at managing my time. I was not good at switching from one task to another. I didn’t fight with them, especially as I got older about if I was going to practice or not wanting to practice, but I really needed someone to prompt me to get started.

If your child is willing to practice, but just won’t start on their own. Please don’t take that as a sign that they do not want to play their instrument, or they’re not interested. We are just often in need of some help while we’re developing executive function skills, which are skills in the brain that help us switch tasks, remember tasks, follow through on tasks and so on.

All of those executive function skills fully develop in the late teens and into our twenties. And so children even in high school will likely need some help.

Things like:

“oh, don’t forget to practice.”

“I don’t think you’ve practiced yet today. When are you going to get started?”

 And some reminders like this can be very helpful, necessary, and are really normal.

I talk to professionals and other teachers all the time who say they also had to be reminded to practice growing up.

I, for one can tell you, I’m super grateful that my parents didn’t give up on doing that. I’m glad they didn’t take that as a sign I wasn’t interested.

Remember that Resistance to Getting Started is Normal

So just like we were discussing that being reminded or needing reminders is normal, it’s also really normal for anybody doing any kind of creative endeavor that takes deep, focused work to have some resistance to getting started.

I’m in a lot of writers groups and writers talk all the time about writer’s block or the struggle with getting started and staring at the blank page in front of them all the time. I’ve heard the same from visual artists and many artists of all types.

It’s important to remember that we are like artists staring at the blank canvas sometimes feeling resistant to beginning practice.

Having some resistance to get started can often be:

Having too many choices in front of us

Knowing how hard we’re about to work

Knowing practice may feel vulnerable because we’re going to do that work in front of an adult who’s going to ask us to focus on certain things.

We know we’re going to be stretched in our ability.

Sometimes it’s very challenging to switch from one activity to another and the transition itself is tricky.

So if there’s some resistance to getting started, but once you get going, it always goes much better, that’s so very normal. Not every student encounters resistance to starting or the need to be reminded to practice, but many of them do.

I invite adults supporting practice to ask themselves:

How can I help this child ease into the start of practice?

Do we need some music to listen to on our way into the practice room?

Do we need a timer to give us a warning?

Do we need a transition activity where the stakes are low and the focus needed low at the beginning?

The important thing is to get into the practice room ready to practice, whatever the transition activity looks like. Ask your teacher for more ideas, or talk with other parents who are making practice work at their house.

Consider Your Child’s Unique Needs

The last tip I’ll share with you today is to consider the unique needs of the child you are practicing with including their age, their developmental stage, and their unique learning needs. It may be really helpful to practice in creative ways that use some out-of-the-box thinking or go beyond what you hear as typical advice about practice for young children.

This is something I wish I had learned earlier as a parent who practiced with my own daughters. I think I was always trying to practice the “right” way and I had to learn over time, the hard way, that I really needed to figure out what does this child actually need to practice successfully?

It was really different for both of my daughters. What your child needs might be really different from what works for someone else. Some students really need step-by-step coaching and being prompted what to do next and how to do it and they really would like an adult to lead the practice for them

And then other children really want to be more independent. And they bristle at the idea of being told what to do . . . sometimes when they actually do need help.

When teaching preschoolers, I’m asking their parents to help with really small details. And some students really are resistant to that. We have to work out ways to practice so they will take on our feedback and be willing to consider it.

Some young students really need there to be some sort of game involved in practice to help them focus and stay engaged.

Other students and children will really just want to get things done and go down the list of assignments and they don’t want to spend time with games.

My biggest tip if you’re practicing with a young child, is to keep the focus on what works for them?

I know I have this tendency and many of us have a tendency to want to do what makes practice enjoyable for us. We structure things by default by how we liked to practice when we were young or how we think practice is most interesting and productive.

It’s so important to remember your child may be really different from you and your needs for learning and to stay engaged. And often siblings are very different from one another as well.

I think if we can look through the lens of what each child needs, when we’re thinking about practice and what techniques to use and how to keep our children engaged, it really sets us up for success.

Ultimately, it’s our goal that our child will practice independently and be motivated intrinsically and internally.

And so if we can help them tap into what is it that makes them learn best. Learning how to get  started with an adult’s help can help them learn to work with themselves when they eventually practice independently.

I know it takes time, energy, patience, and more to do this on a day in and day out basis when we are working with young musicians in our lives.

So, if that is something that you do, I just would say hats off to you. Thank you for the work you’re doing. We’re giving children a real gift when we have music in their lives, when they are able to learn, to make beautiful music with others, and to work with themselves. We’re giving them a life rich with music and connection. So thank you for all you do!