Preventing Failure With Children's Piano Lessons

Despite what you may think, a child's failure at theafter-school pursuit that is part of their general activity
piano is often due to a myopic point of view on theschedule. They don't know or care where Carnegie
part of the teacher. Most piano methods are tooHall is. If you make piano too difficult, as all methods do,
difficult for younger children, especially those involvingchildren will shift their attention to something else
use of reading music exclusively.before the teacher can even begin to introduce the
Conventional piano lessons have a quit rate of 90%.basic ideas.
Even with an inspired and creative teacher, it may notUnless a child has previously shown aptitude at reading
be enough to interest your child in playing the piano.music, or is driven by a passion to be a piano virtuoso
What can be done to make children more interested inand has demonstrable facility with the conventional
pursuing the piano?methods, you owe it to them to try a simple,
We suggest you try a "starter" piano method thattransparent "starter" piano method that will give
doesn't involve reading music immediately.children time to get used to the idea of the piano
Rather than read complicated music at first, childrenwithout being forced to deal with the complexities of
are encouraged to freely explore fun, familiar songs,reading music.
leading to increased enthusiasm.Go slow in the beginning and it will yield better results in
In general, children regard the piano as an elective,the end.