r/Parenting • u/Catsforfour • 15d ago
Discussion Kid won’t practice his instrument
Hello!!!
My son is 14 a huge lover of music. Last year he asked me to sign him up for drum lessons so I signed him up around May of last year. He was liking lessons so I bought him a drum kit. He never practices. He goes to lessons once a week but that’s it. I encourage him to practice but he says it’s too hard or makes up an excuse.
Should I be pushing him to practice? I feel like a 30 minute lesson a week isn’t enough and it’s kind of expensive. I was really hoping he had found a hobby he enjoys outside of gaming or napping.
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u/Flewtea 15d ago
I am a private music teacher. Many parents drastically underestimate how strong your executive functioning skills have to be to practice effectively. It’s a huge lift that is not asked of kids at this age in most other circumstances in homework or sports. What we are asking them to do is much more akin to adults trying to start a workout routine—and we all know how that goes by February each year.
They are being asked to synthesize 30 minutes of teaching into an effective daily practice plan of 30 minutes each. While teachers should be helping this, kids do have to take quite a bit of ownership. What to practice, for how long, in what order, using what strategies. Then make notes on where to start for the next day to push it a little farther. That’s a lot!
Secondly, they’re asked to do this routinely, alone, and with no check in for a week. There’s no team to body double with them or friends to look forward to seeing 3x a week. There’s no grade and usually no tests. There’s no daily homework that gets reviewed by the teacher the following class period.
Note that nowhere in here have I talked about whether or not they love music. Most humans do. But we hate being bad at something and we have pretty crummy willpower all things considered. So when you’re a beginner and it’s hard and you can tell that it’s not going well and you don’t sound like Ringo Starr yet, it’s hard to build the routine that lets you overcome our lack of will power.
So what should you do? The same strategies you’d use if he were struggling in an academic class with getting homework done. And do this together. Say hey, my understanding is you love drums and you want to improve. Is that still true? Cool. As your parent, I know you need to practice. Your teacher knows you need to practice. You know you need to practice. So let’s try some things to help you build that habit. What time of day could he commit to doing just 10 minutes? Set a timer. Tag it on to another habit. Give himself a small reward for consistency, say a week straight. If he likes checking boxes, work to create a list of goals for the day/week that his teacher has asked and check them off. Read the book Atomic Habits together.
And ask the teacher. If the teacher doesn’t have solid, clear, actionable advice for you, get a different teacher—there are many mediocre music teachers out there too who may be able to play well but aren’t as good at motivating and working with kids and families.
But come at this from a perspective of helping him live up to his own goals and be his best self. The one who achieves and works for the things he loves. Most kids need a good bit of scaffolding to get there but these skills can hold over for anything else they take up in life. Including that January fitness goal.