Parental Involvement in Children's Music Lessons

If you're a parent and you're considering signing your child up for music, prepare to learn with them.

When parents sign their children up for lessons, they are also responsible for making sure the child practices and is understanding what's happening. Unlike school where they're there for 30 hours a week, they only have 30 minutes a week of music lessons. It makes it hard for concepts to get ingrained properly.

Music is an amazing thing and young children should be exposed to it. I personally teach children as young as 5 years old. Some children struggle with lessons, while some are ready to start at a young age. Either way, if you want your child to play music at a young age it's important that they have a guitar that fits them.

There are a few amazing opportunities when you actively sit with your child when they practice. You can learn music yourself from what they play and help them learn if you're able to understand what's going on. You can help mold what they will want to play and listen to, and making music with your family can create memories that will last a lifetime.

For this reason alone, it's important for parents to set aside 15-30 minutes every day to sit with their child and help them practice. When you pick your kids up from lessons, make sure you really try to understand what the teacher says. If you can help your kid with basic math and spelling, it's understandable that if you're signing them up for music lessons, then you should try to help them with music lessons (it's actually a lot of fun to learn and can be a great opportunity to get closer with your children). This doesn't mean you have to be a professional, that's my job as the teacher. Your job as the parent is to make sure they fulfill the necessary amount of practice time at home during the week.

If you're not helpful with your child's practice, or not trying to understand what's happening in your kid's lessons, you could end up wasting money on lessons that the child isn't practicing for, and causing tons of self-confidence issues for the child. When most kids start, they use a book, and lets be honest, bookwork is boring for kids. They want to learn how to be a rockstar, even if they don't know any music, they just know that people who are good at guitars are rockstars, and that's the coolest thing ever to some kids. Some children will downright refuse to practice without parental intervention, and this is crucial. You can't have dessert without your dinner, and you can't shred without practicing the fundamentals!

It's always night and day difference when someone gets out of the book with how much fun they have with it! Getting to influence the music your children love has a drastic impact on how much fun learning can be! By playing along to songs you love, it can make you feel more confident with your abilities and can help you get better at learning new songs faster!

There's no substitute for a combination of a dedicated teacher, an excited student and engaged parents. If two of those things are there, any child will become a great musician, but with all three, the timeline is much quicker, and you'll truly get to foster a spectacular relationship with music and your child.

Taking lessons is crucial to anyone's development, and having parents who are actively a part of your lessons will make your learning rapidly accelerate. If you or someone you know is ready to take a music lesson, please reach out!