Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Piano Teachers Forum How do you deal with bratty students?

If you're not American, you don't.

Chinese and Russian teachers are known for cursing or abusing their students..

(Clarification needed)If you're not American you don't what?

i'm suggesting you handle it with such disregard for safety that it somehow hits the child on the head preferably. Yes , that is what I am suggesting. Your word against his. And he is a kid with a wild imagination. His parents won't think anything of it. The only problem is that the yellow pages is being discontinued in many states. Perhaps a rather large music anthology.

I think he meant if you aren't American, you don't deal with bratty students. American culture is awfully tolerant of such behavior and being so litigious, we hesitate to act on it.

same with the Japanese or the old fashioned American teachers

Getting beat around the head (well, maybe not physically) at every lesson is a good way to keep your student working hard (and I know from experience from being a student) !!

I always am aware that others are reading this forum. Part of me was thinking it might be a GOOD idea if she recognized her son in this thread, but doubted she cares enough to even research it.

Honestly, some calmly-delivered corporal punishment would have helped my bratty student. Imagine a Chinese, Japanese, or Russian teacher slapping him upside the head . . . the parents would have cried "abuse!" and gotten lawyers involved.

One of the reasons parenting in America is so impossible is because you're labeled as an "abuser" for spanking a child if it misbehaves. It's ridiculous.

That's why I had to dismiss the "bratty student" from my roster. Being in America ties my hands--no one, including his parents, is allowed to discipline this child properly. At any rate, he's seven and it's too late, his behaviors are pretty much cemented. Spoiled kids are almost always angry and expect to be pampered and indulged well into adulthood. It's a recipe for future mischief. And now my tax dollars will fund his prison stay 10 or so years from now, if he even waits that long, yippee.

Thanks for the stereotype!

I'm Welsh.

Welsh piano teachers beat up kids, then send them down coal mines.

That's the secret of *my* success as a piano teacher. <droll sarcasm>

If I had only known it was too late for me, at seven years of age. But perhaps it would be too discouraging if we did know as much about our future lives as our piano teachers know.

Just for the sake of discussion, it does seem to me that there is a middle ground for guiding the behavior of the young, short of beating and reform school.

Still, I'll admit that my niece was headed south by seven, and has continued straight down from then until now. I hate to allow it, but maybe the OP has a point. A very dark one.

You should never, ever smack a student.

The parents should be smacked. :P

Exactly right. Parents "teach" their children everyday!

just got back from a conference on motivation and they also mentioned using a flat surface say a binder, placing the binder on the top side of the skull and hitting down with your fist. The resulting pain and lack of bruising makes this quite effective. I haven't tried it yet as the yellow pages has been working quite well but perhaps one day I will get the opportunity.

BadOrange, give it a rest. It wasn't funny when you started, and it still isn't.

Would have to disagree. It was funny when I started and it still is. If you want to deal with kids, you better start developing a sense of humour. Perhaps that bratty kid is just so bored by your complete lack of animation.

I'm not the one teaching the bratty kid, and I actually do have a sense of humour. I even like a bit of black humour. But I'm really hard pressed to find physical abuse of children amusing. Perhaps because I've seen it (and its results). Maybe you haven't.

that is the essence of black humour is it not ? CHild abuse ? not funny, Student getting hit with the yellow pages for playing the wrong note, quite funny, One is real , one isn't.

Maybe it was the way you expressed it. And some of the details had echoes of a distressing case in my area some years ago. OK, I'll leave it at that.

i think it was pretty obvious what was real and not once i mentioned the yellow pages and blunt force trauma.

Of course I knew it wasn't real! Give me credit for some intelligence. But that doesn't mean it's necessarily appropriate to joke about it. You seem ok with it. Others might be, too. I'm not. You made your joke. You made it a second time. I simply suggested that was enough. Over and out.