For Better or For Worse by Lynn Johnston for May 06, 2013

Are you sure it’s for the children?

As a kid I was too much of a perfectionist to get very far with a musical instrument. If I made a mistake I stopped and started over from the beginning again. After 3 hours of the same 12 notes Grandma would call a halt to piano practice and have me go outside for a while. Practice would resume again tomorrow.

I loved taking keyboard lessons when I was 8, and would voluntarily practice for 3-4 hours every Saturday (right from getting home from lessons). My parents practically had to tear me away! My older daughter is now taking violin lessons. While she loves it and likes to practice, to help her keep it up over the summer, my husband is going to take it up as well, so it is something that they can do together!

Sometimes the lesson is not the immediate result but the longer-term development. You don’t just quit things because you don’t “love” them.

A trumpet is a much smaller investment (cost and size-wise) than a piano. Plus, when the kid gets tired of it, it’s much easier to stash away or put out for a yard sale.

Kids need to be taught to follow through. They need to learn to finish what they started. For as many parents that have forced their children to learn a musical instrument there are very few kids that as adults say that they wish they’d never learned the piano. Most of the time it’s the other way around. They wish their parents had made them learn something. I was forced to learn violin as a kid and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Who’s Ellie’s friend?

If the kid begs for an instrument and the parent spends money on it, the kid better follow through, the parents have every right to demand it. I wish I’d taken piano lessons as a kid, we already had a piano and my elder brother taught himself some basic stuff, but I never went beyond chopsticks. I’ve always regretted not learning.

I never understood why parents make their children take music lessons if they don’t want to. There are many things that as an adult I start, find I don’t like as much as I thought I would, and quit. It isn’t “not finishing what I started” but trying new things. For kids it is vitally important to try lots of new things. They should be free to try and dabble, and find what they really like. Parents are too quit to jump in, buy the most expensive equipment (this goes for sports too), then “make” the child keep at it. It’s not for the child’s sake!

After teaching piano, organ, and keyboard for over 30 years, I finally gave it up last year. There just aren’t many students like K.C. Fahel and her daughter anymore. My parents made me practice for 30 mins every day no matter what and while I hated it at the time, I earned enough in my first three years teaching music (I started teaching at age 15) that I bought my first car brand new with cash and paid for my own college education including room and board. Times have changed. Parents are so afraid they will alienate their children if they set boundaries that they are sacrificing far more than they realize at their childrens’ expense.

wish I had learned to play piano!!!!

I took accordion and piano, but it didn’t take me. My mom played some, but I inherited my father’s disconnect between brain and fingers. I wound up singing, which doesn’t require aim, fast reflexes, or finger dexterity. I have composed a bit.

My younger daughter never followed through with things, so when she wanted a (French) horn, we got her a cheap trumpet, and when that went well, a very cheap horn. Well, she kept on and on, and got in All State Band five years in a row in secondary school, and is still at it in her 40’s! Still doesn’t follow through on anything else. You never know.

Of her four kids, the first two crudded out on taking horn in middle school band, though one is taking general music now. The other two probably aren’t going to set the brass world on fire, either, though their mom plays the horn and tuba, and their dad the tuba and alto clarinet. Kind of a thin dynasty there.

And yet today my 23-year-old son said to me, "Mom, why did you let me quit choir when I whined about it.. I so wish I could sing better today.

Everybody is in the same boat, when it comes to their children. That is why this comic strip is so good…

The bottom line is that it IS a form of ABUSE!!!! YOU CAN MAKE ANY PHONY REASON TO JUSTIFY IT, MAKE IT SOUND AS IF IT"S FOR THE KID’S OWN GOOD BUT IT’S STILL THE SAME THING!!!! YOU CAN MODIFY A HOUSE ANY WAY YOU LIKE PAINT IT, REDECORATE IT OR WHATEVER BUT IT’S STILL A HOUSE, AND ABUSE….. IS STILL ABUSE!!!!!! ………CASE CLOSED!!!!!!!!!!!!

A family I knew came into big money later on in life. Their youngest son, who was a friend of mine, was the only one still living with his parents as he was a teenager. With their newly found wealth they spent money freely, including buying a grand piano. Naturally, that meant piano lessons for the son. He gave it a good honest try, but the piano teacher said he struggled too much. Finally he told his parents he just was not going to get good at it and they saw him practicing at it; he could not deal with the teacher’s bad attitude. As it ended up, the dad relented over the mom’s protests, and told my friend he could quit, but to keep in mind since they hit paydirt “We just want you to know that we want you to have every opportunity we could not give your siblings.”Later he confided in me that he felt like telling his parents “Just leave me alone and stop trying to shove everything down my throat just because your other kids could not have it!” But he felt with all the BS he went through, just being freed from piano lessons was good enough to thank them.

I congradulate you! I’m pleased to find someone who sees things my way!

Especially not asking them and threatening them if they don’t.

when my daughter lost interest in the piano, I allowed her to save me $30 a lesson.