Image courtesy of PianoLessons.com

Ah, piano lessons…the curse of youth. As parents, we read the reports and studies tying music education to success in learning everything from math to science, and dutifully enroll our kids in piano lessons. The first years aren’t bad – the novelty of playing an instrument and the sponge-like minds of children generally make the beginning of their musical career relatively pain-free. But eventually fun becomes work, and work leads to whining.

“I hate piano, Mom! How much longer do I have to do this?”

Just getting my daughter to sit at the keyboard and practice became a chore, and even my husband questioned how much she was getting out of the whole drama piano had become. Stubborn mom that I am, I wasn’t about to let her quit after investing all that time! She was just getting good! But something had to be done to make lessons more palatable before we killed each other. Here’s what worked for us:

• Tell the piano teacher! Maybe I’m just a less-than-caring mom, but after lessons became routine, I’d just drop my daughter off, head to Starbucks, then pick her up. I didn’t see her teacher much, and assumed that the wall we’d hit on lessons was something between my daughter and me. Once we talked to the teacher, she had some great ideas about how to vary the lessons, including letting my daughter pick some of what she wanted to play. Knowing she had some control over the lesson helped immensely

• Include other activities, like song writing. We’re fortunate in that our piano teacher includes a lot of music theory along with the actual piano playing. When presented with the opportunity to write her own music, my daughter immediately started using up music paper like it was Kleenex. Learning that all those scales and chords could be put to use to accompany her own melodies opened a whole new world for her.

• Get some popular music to play. So many piano ‘standards’ are filled with songs that kids have never heard (and will never hear again), that they can’t relate to what they’re playing. A few newer primers include standards from the Disney movies or Star Wars, but investing in a copy of the Spongebob sheet music or even some of the music from my kids’ video games has made sitting at the piano a fun thing, rather than torture.

Having crossed the line from tween to teen, my house now sounds like a top-40 radio station as my daughter willingly sits down to play songs by The Fray or Linkin Park. I occasionally sneak in one or two songs that I like, and she even plays those too!

Not every kid is cut out to play piano for so long, but by varying lesson content, working with the teacher, and adding some fun extras, kids can actually stick with piano long enough to realized what a gift they have – and move on to complaining about other things.

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