Should we use rewards or incentives for music practice?

Barbie Wong and I recently had an interesting discussion on the topic of rewards and incentives that we recorded for the Time to Practice podcast, and we look forward to hearing your thoughts. You can join us in the Music Nest community for ongoing discussions, live monthly meetings, and coming in January a fun 30 day practice challenge!

We want to preface this discussion by acknowledging that there are many, very valid, opinions on this topic and we invite you listen to some of our ideas and the ways we have wrestled with this topic ourselves and want to acknowledge whatever you decide for your own family, or teaching practices, is totally up to you what you decide to do related to rewards and incentives. It is perfectly fine to disagree with us and we respect everyone’s position on this hot button topic. Let’s dive in!

To Listen to the full episode, you can find the Time to Practice Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Audible, Spotify, or your favorite podcast platform. You can also listen directly from the link below: 

You can also read the full text of our conversation in the transcript below, if you prefer.

Here are some highlights of our conversation on the topic of rewards & incentives:

Find rewards that fit/motivate your child : each child and student is unique and what appeals them and motivates them will vary. Also, over time this will change for each student, so don’t worry if something works for awhile and then you need to change it up!

Find a reward you are willing to follow through on: whatever you choose, make sure it is something you are willing to follow through on. Don’t promise something that isn’t actually possible to deliver.

Practice before privileges: Barbie shared that when her children were younger, there were certain privileges that came after the practice was finished. They were likely an incentive for her children, but she thought of them this as privileges that were earned – which is a great perspective!

Find a reward that fits your values: rewards can be things like quality time together, picking the family movie on the weekend, baking a favorite dessert together, or a trip to the library to pick out new books to read. They don’t have to be monetary or extravagant. Think creatively and pick something you can feel good about if you choose to use them.

Find a reward or incentive that feeds the habit of practice that you are trying to build: try to think of incentives that relate to music or music practice if possible, this helps us continue to feed the habit of practice that we are building.

A few things to keep in mind:

Let go of guilt: it is very normal for people to need incentives to do deep or intensive work – especially at the beginning stages of something like learning an instrument. They likely won’t need these incentives forever, certainly not in the same way, but we do benefit from learning to do the focused and disciplined work of getting to our instrument each day.

Trust that its the beginning stages of practice where everything feels challenging that needs rewards the most – over time students tend to be motivated by learning certain pieces of music, participation in social events related to music, performing and other rewards that are about the music itself and the personal, intrinsic rewards they get from being involved in music. What we are talking about in this conversation is how to keep them going long enough for those things to take root.

Experiment with what works like a scientist: we are learning about our child or students along the way as we figure out what is motivating to them. Some things will work and others won’t. Treating this like an experiment where we are gathering information can be helpful so we don’t get discouraged along the way.

We’d love to hear what you think after this discussion – we know it’s a complicated topic and in the end we’re all trying to do our best to support our child or students’ efforts and help them get over the resistance to getting started or the pull to be doing other things that cna often get in the way of practice. 

Links in this episode:

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Below is the full transcript from my conversation with Barbie Wong about rewards & incentives