http://coppellpianoshop.wordpress.com/2012/02/08/why-do-children-drop-out-of-piano-lessons/

I saw this Blog post pop up today, and it presented a very thought-provoking view on the subject.

Having, myself, belonged to the "lose interest and return" category, I must vouch for the importance of having a source of self-motivation.

Thoughts?

I'm not so sure that the problem lies entirely with the pedagogy, though, and I think the problems can lie more with parents and the allure of "more interesting" things.

I've noticed in my hometown that children with parents that play an active role in their children's generally stay with the instrument. Many parents I know listen to their children's piano lessons, help supervise the practicing as needed, play piano music around the house, invest in buying a decent piano, attend all music recitals with their kids etc... and they turn music into a "family" thing.

At the same time, I think almost everyone goes through that point where they want to quit and sometimes (though I know this isn't a favorite of most American parents), parents just have to push their kids through it. When I was ten or so, I wanted to quit piano and do girl scouts and sports but my parents told me that if I quit, I would have to fill all my time with chores. At this point I was practicing over an hour a day and I couldn't fathom doing over an hour a day more of chores so I stayed with piano and I am so happy that I did.

Interesting.
I, too, dropped out as a teen. In hindsight, I think it was largely because I had a teacher who taught because she had to , not because she wanted to. I don't recall EVER playing any songs I enjoyed, they were all boring "adult" songs. I so wish I had expressed this properly to my parents. And, I wish my parents had hunted around a bit for a highly recommended teacher, rather than the one who lived down the street (I rode my bike to and fro, seriously!). Anyways, those were the "old" days, distractions were far fewer, I imagine it's a different story today, regarding WHY kids stop.

I returned decades later and it's my biggest (and perhaps ONLY) regret in life- not having taken up again immediately after college. I have to go cry now. (not really, I'll go practice instead)

Interesting! Parents who supervise their children seem to get good results. There are many variables in this problem. Too many other activities, parents leave it up to the student to practise, an incompetent teacher, the proverbial boy who would rather be batting a ball than practising the piano. Music that doesn't interest. I'm sure other reasons as well. Perhaps an untuned piano as some have asked why it sounds so different on my piano than their own.

Ralph

I disagree with much of the article.

I dare anyone to name a single activity that a child remains interested and self-motivated in from the ages of 7 to 18. People change, it's completely natural for a person's interests to change as they grow.

The key to staying in lessons and learning is discipline, not interest. Discipline is what gets us through school (filled with subjects that we are not constantly interested in.)

Having taught hundreds of kids, the single most determining factor in whether or not they remain in lessons is discipline - much of which has to be instilled by the parents.

Well, in my case it was because I was a college brat (as opposed to army brat). I had a couple years of lessons around the age of 10 but that was about the longest we ever stayed in one place. So I got the basics but mostly played by ear. Fortunately my parents kept moving the piano with us so I always had one. I did manage to get a year of lessons in just after high school before I moved again. After I left home for good I went without a piano for a couple of years until my parents gave me the one I grew up with. Really I have had a piano of some sort ever since and just play for enjoyment (my own -- not sure if anyone else enjoys hearing me!)

This is an 'everyone has their story' tale. I grew up with a friend of a friend that came over to my house one day and played 'Malaguena'....I was a year older than she was and I was astounded at how well she played. I was envious. We both went to the same college for music. She never continued to study. She had the discipline and training I did not have but my opinion is she was forced to play and ultimately dropped out. My story , on the other hand, is a continued study and discpline at the piano. Why?...because I cannot stay away...I love it!

I'll bet there are tons of stories on both sides of this issue.

rada

rada

I suspect there are multiple reasons for children to abandon an instrument. One of them has to be a lack of passion for music itself.

I offer the case of my son who studied both piano and violin. I played duets with him in his recitals. We took him to the Metropolitan Opera and Tanglewood. He heard classical music at home. And yet, since graduating from high school, he hasn't touched the piano or the violin to this day. I have never asked him why but I think he truly lacked a passion for music even though he could play it fairly competently. He found other interests that were more compelling.

Agree 100%, if we do not love it, we will not care.

I think the article missed the boat.

Soft parents.
How many kids would not:

go to school
do chores
go to church
study
turn off the TV
etc.... if their parents would let them?


also..

Mean teachers
Boring music
Fear of recitals
Lack of self confidence
Too much else on their plate
Money

in my own case, if i'd been allowed to take piano lessons i would never have quit. i played by ear until i was in a position to get piano lessons for myself, in my early 20s.

however, my official instrument, growing up, was the flute (the instrument my father was willing to pay for lessons for). i did not really like the sound of the flute, and i didn't care for most of the flute repertoire. i did practice 6 hours a day, though, and my father put a lot of pressure on me to become a professional flautist.

this seemed like a stupid idea to me (two flute seats in every orchestra is not great odds of getting a job) and it was made infinitely worse when my father started taking me all the way to NYC for lessons with a professional flautist so that i could get into the all-state orchestra in high school.

much too much pressure. i loved music, i had no trouble focusing or devoting many hours to practice, but i hated the expectations and the pressure. i quit flute at the age of 15, dashing my father's hopes for me, but reclaiming myself.

if a parent's intentions are for the good and happiness of the child, rather than expectations that the child fulfill some sort of dream as an extension of themselves--that is, if the parents' intention is wholesome--then i imagine parental involvement is a good thing. but it can also be very unhealthy.

Parents play a big part in this but some don't do enough and others too much.

My brother and I were told we would take three years of music lessons--he the trumpet and I the French horn--so in the second grade I was lugging it back and forth from home to school, from the classroom to the band hall for lessons and band practice, and playing for chapel every now and then.
There was no question that we would practise or take lessons. It was considered part of our education.

In the fifth grade the school burned down and made radical changes in how things would be done. I missed lessons for the rest of that year and until the 7th grade when my mother decided I could take piano lessons.

I happened to like it so there was no problem and my mother would not interfere with the teacher after I found a good one. But other students took only because they were forced to take. I liked it.

The students whose parents sat in on the lessons made sure they practised and followed the advice. Some parents delivered and picked them up but never questioned what I was doing. Some would ask it if used a ruler to swat them. No one had done that to me so I didn't see any point in doing that.

Point: Parents really need to supervise the younger children and discipline them to follow a routine, develop a systematic plan of practice, and be consistent in following it through.

The attitude in doing this as well should be supportive rather than some sort of belligerency.

Ralph

I name myself - learning piano. I realize I may be the exception to the rule, but I started lessons when I was 10 and never lost interest. My lessons representated a financial hardship for my parents to they laid down one rule when I started lessons: (Sorry, if you've heard this before), "If we ever have to ask you to practice, the lessons stop". They never did. I fell completely in love with the piano at my very first lesson. I clearly remember the thrill of sounding out the notes to "The Woodchuck". I stopped lessons when I went to college and didn't restart until my 50's but I was always learning new music.

I'm with gooddog -- I started lessons when I was 7 and loved them right through high school. My parents used to beg me to stop practicing so they could go to bed .

I agree with previous posts stating multiple reasons come into play. I was ,and remain, an extremely self-disciplined person. My parents were immigrants and "strict". I practiced daily. I just lost interest in the piano and music overall, regrettably!

Video games.
The consumption of ice cream.

I stopped reading when I got to the part where he started some kind of blather about people not being musicians unless they could improvise, an attitude which is a sure sign of a certain kind narrow-minded cluelessness, IMO. But I already knew there was a problem when he said earlier that teachers bore the responsibility for keeping the kid interested. That's pretty weird thinking, if you ask me.

Anyway, why shouldn't children drop out of piano lessons? I did, and lived to tell the tale.

Wow!! As a Piano Teacher I wish I could find dream parents who did all this (from chobeethaninov):

“Many parents I know (please excuse my bracketed findings)
1. listen to their children's piano lessons,
(mow the lawn instead)
2. help supervise the practising as needed,
(scream and go for a walk)
3. play piano music around the house,
(dead silence ... generation gap)
4. invest in buying a decent piano,
(settle for a crummy cheap job)
5. attend all music recitals with their kids etc...
(play golf instead)
6. and they turn music into a "family" thing. ”
(switch off and watch TV)

Such benign spirits won’t touch sides in checking in with St. Peter at the Pearly Gates.

I'm heading for the Other Place.

I totally disagree. Discipline has nothing to do with this. Kids may not have the discipline but if they love playing piano, nothing will pull them away from playing piano. The main reason is that the kids or adults do not like enough to play piano. A teacher also cannot keep the students if the students really have no interest in learning to play piano, regardless how good of a teacher.

School is different from learning to play piano. We do need to go to school whether you are interested or not. Most people will finish their 12 years of schooling, but we do not need to learn piano or any other musical instruments. Parents can instill the discipline for certain duration. If the kids have no interest, sooner or later, the kids will have no desire to play (don't even mention practice diligently).

I noticed that too. I have never felt the desire to improvise nor have I had the interest to compose. There is so much wonderful literature, I am satisfied with what we have. I do realize learning composition can help me become a better pianist, but my time is so limited, I choose to spend it learning music, not writing it.

I think the trend today is to put all the blame for failing students on the teachers. In my experience, the fault invariably lies with parents who neglect their kids or refuse to give them clear expectations, boundaries and consistent consequences. When it came to piano, my parents set a clear boundary. I knew from experience that they would enforce it. I was lucky in that I adored playing, but in the back of my mind I always knew if I didn't practice, they wouldn't pay for my lessons. I believed their threat because they always followed through.

Same here, I started learning the electronic organ at the age of 11. There was no day that I spent without practicing and playing. I felt my day was not complete without playing the organ. My older sister begged me to stop practicing so that she can study. My parents never encouraged me to practice etc, it was totally me.

My mom would just get me lessons here and there, for as long as I was interested. Which usually wasn't very long. I was dreadfully handicapped by poor sight reading, and I remember complaining to one teacher after another, I can't sight read.. it's really hard for me to sight read... They never paid attention because somehow I showed up the next week knowing the music. But it made practicing so extremely difficult as I would spell out each note, locate it on the keyboard, try to fix it in memory, then look back and try to find the next note on the sheet music. I could keep this up for about a few months at a time, then would give up, start showing up at lessons saying "I didn't work on it... didn't get a chance to do this..." Then lessons would stop. It made me feel really bad. I remember times just staring despondently at the wall behind the piano and trying to gather up strength to go on with the next measure and wondering why I didn't have enough discipline to do this (which my mom said I lacked)... oh gosh it was just horrible discouragement. You couldn't just go on youtube to find out what something sounded like either. At 16, I poked at the first measures of the Rachmaninov prelude in G-minor op.23-5 and could not make heads or tails of what was going on, and that was the end of lessons. Forever. Or almost forever.
But I am so happy to be able to sight read better now, it is like whole vistas opening up, which I always felt were closed when I was a teenager!

Ok, what I said might sound "too good to be true" but many Asian parents in particular do spend that much time and invest that deeply in their children's music education (without being Tiger Mom's). I know also that my family is rather like that which I described.

My mom was probably too "conflicted" about giving up her own serious piano studies, to encourage me 100% to pursue mine. There was always a strange, silent, sort of disapproving atmosphere when I practiced, or didn't practice. I don't remember getting any help, or any praise, or any comments at all on progress or lack thereof. She didn't even tell me to practice, even when I didn't practice all week! The lessons would just... stop. It makes me wonder: If a parent pushes a child and lives vicariously through the child's musical success, can the opposite happen too? If the parent squelched his/her gift, does it have a dampening effect on the child as well? I've often wondered why I felt so discouraged, when it seemed so unnecessary, and help could have been so near at hand.

It doesn't matter now, as I feel nearly completely un-discouraged I guess I have finally gotten too old to be discouraged, haha...

Edit: Mom finally did re-discover her own love of music, later in life... playing hymns with beautiful arrangements and a very elegant "approach" to the keyboard. But she never played Chopin again. She was very gregarious and lively, but something about her earlier ambitions-- it was just a closed door for her, and somehow a closed door for me as well... Mystery! And too late to ask her what she felt about music...

Edit #2: Parents in general... Mystery!

I think it is a middle ground. I think children need to be interested AND have some amount of discipline to stick with something productive (even though I play a lot of video games, I will be the first one to tell you they aren't productive activities ). There are always extremes, but for me, I started music at a somewhat older age than many people. My first formal lessons were on classical guitar, then I started taking piano lessons too. I do have discipline, but interest in music is what drove me then, and continues to drive me today.

I think that the issue is far more complicated than the one line answers people have given. In addition,
I don't think that the scenario quoted above is unrealistic, and I am an American parent.

Both of my children have played the piano and I have supported them according to the the quoted statements first made, not the parenthetical ones.

It has not always been easy. I have sworn to my husband that I will let them quit on numerous occasions (especially when they, out of frustration, have fallen to the floor in a pool of tears). My oldest son (now 15), has moved from piano only (4-10) to piano + saxophone (10-12), to saxophone only (12-14), to classical guitar (new obsession). We have paid for private lessons on each instrument and have supported him completely in each endeavor. Sure, if it were left up to me, he would play the piano, but today, that is not where his heart is (he tinkers with the piano, just this evening he was trying to plunk out the Skyrim theme song). The most important thing is that music, regardless of which instrument he is playing, remains an important part of his life. I think that it is important, as his mom, to create an environment where he can pursue his musical interests easily.

My younger son plays the piano and he is getting ready to go to middle school. No one has mentioned the fact that many children might quit the piano right around this age because they attempt to play two instruments simultaneously (in our school system, one cannot play the piano as their "school" instrument of choice). This is what happened with our oldest child. Our school has a very good music program and each child is required to play their instrument at least 20 minutes every night (practice cards need to be signed by the parent). It was next to impossible for my oldest son to play the piano, practice his saxophone, and complete his homework each evening (he is an honors student with advanced courses and he also plays soccer and has 4 hours of training each week).

My youngest son and I agreed that he would not learn a new instrument in middle school and would continue with the piano instead. It was a decision we reached together. He fully understood that attempting to master a second instrument would necessarily reduce his commitment to the piano. Only time will tell if my younger son will stick with the piano. I don't think that his commitment to the piano right now is any greater than my older son's was at the same time. We simply know more now and this knowledge will help us create an environment that will better support our second son's interest in the piano.

Did you do well at school or average or below average? I noticed smart kids have good sight reading ability. Average kids at school usually have problem with sight reading.

This shows that your son is interested in learning how to play musical instruments. He may not be the most patient person, but he does not hate learning how to play musical instruments. Otherwise, he would have quit long time ago.

Imagine Glasslove (A Madam with an iron hand)
owning up to saying of their progeny taking piano lessons ...

“I have sworn to my husband that I will let them quit
on numerous occasions (especially when they,
out of frustration, have fallen to the floor in a pool of tears ”
But adding:
“Only time will tell if my younger son will stick with the piano.”

The ambitious dreams of proud Mums so easily hit the fan?



No wonder they leave home asap.

Why do you assume the frustration was due to overly heavy handed parental pressure?

Um, I wasn't exactly average, no... but still couldn't sight read. What an odd perspective on the sight-reading question, though. It's not rocket science. There are certain keys to sight reading that could be easily grasped by anyone, but I wasn't getting them "back then." My teacher now had the same problem-- poor sight-reading, relied on memorization, but in conservatory improved to the point that she won a sight-reading award. So she has a little more empathy for my predicament, and with her guidance, my sight-reading seems to be improving rapidly.

You ask Horror,
“Why do you assume the frustration was due to
overly heavy handed parental pressure?”

Surely the excessive zeal of parents SAYS IT ALL ...
when progeny
“have fallen to the floor in a pool of tears”.

Could have been frustration with a certain part of the music.

As an old hand at the piano teaching game Horror,
I can say with well-travelled experience that ... the problem of a difficult piece of music can always be reduced to it’s parts ... and thereby steadily mastered .

However, sight-reading is the biggest bugbear for most students ... when collapse in utter frustration is a well-known by-product
(often heralding giving up piano lessons).

Thus for a child to
“have fallen to the floor in a pool of tears” ... speaks for a tyrannical Mum.

Ipso facto ... to quote the good books.

I don't know why people are arguing over this issue.

There are thousands of reasons why kids quit piano. Thousands. One could take a survey and find percentages for each reason. Maybe there are a dozen or so "most popular reasons to quit lessons," but there just isn't ONE reason people quit or ONE reason people will come back to piano later on.

Any further discussion will just be a pool of anecdotes and opinions.

Especially since we don't know 99% of them personally.

Thanks for the hearty laugh BTB. The whole family, over their cereal bowls this morning, had a wonderful time laughing at your comments.
While my husband thought your comments were genuinely funny (and an absolutely absurd characterization of my disposition/parenting style), my children weren't laughing at first. Laughing commenced the moment I glared and raised my iron fist.

Taking after Maggie Thatcher with the iron fist
Glasslove ... but the whole idea on this Forum is to have fun.

Your husband obviously plays golf to laugh at
my crazy jokes .

My husband has never touched a standard sized golf club in his entire life (he has, on occasion, played with the wee ones on miniature golf courses with the children--that is, when I unchain them from their desks/musical instruments

+1

just like there may be more than one reason a kid is crying in frustration over piano.

Ouch! Even the husband is chained to the Iron Maiden ... and not allowed to play a real game of golf ... Christine is a tough cookie!

Judging by the lady’s repertoire ... the familiar highly scalar Clementi Sonatina 36-1
(which I have just played through and recorded ... Spiritoso and Andante) ...
tells of someone relatively new to the game ... still freeing up the fingers.

For what it’s worth, Clementi (the then Clayderman of the keyboard) sold pianos
from his London establishment ... and used the fleet-fingered Irishman John Field to help sell his wares ... both however were merely showing off a finger dexterity to wow the customers ... and their compositions can hardly be called quality music.

Just thought you chaps ought to know.