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Have you thought of having an adult only "Piano Party" at your house. Getting together with your other adult students and hearing them play and discussing things about their music might be fun. I have a piano teacher friend who invites me every 6 months to her house for one of these informal playing parties. Calling them parties takes the recital feeling out of it. There are about 6 to 9 of us that enjoy it very much. We learn about new music that we might be interested in learning.

Never replied to this very nice comment. Thanks!

Ok. Adult beginner poking my nose in here.

Ask her what music she loves to listen to. Look at her cell phone and see what music she has on it. Then, ask her which of these she'd like to learn to play and find music for it for her. Work through it with her a few measures at a time instead of all at once.

Ask her what her all-time favorite Christmas carol is, then find an arrangement of it that's actually pretty and work through it with her, encouraging her every step of the way.

PRAISE HER, let her have fun with her lesson. If she's not making progress, go back and play something with her that she already knows. Just let it be fun. If she's getting ready for her daughter's wedding, (a traumatic event for most mothers) maybe she has a favorite song she'd like to learn for that.

Tell her to get a copy of Practiceopedia. Pick out ONE THING in that and ask her to read and try on her own. When she's experienced how much that helps her, (give it some time to sink in) pick another idea.

Consider doing longer lessons, further apart. Maybe an hour every two weeks. (This is what I do.)

Get her out of those dopey beginner books. I did this for myself (with my teacher's blessing) after the first book (Hal Leonard's adult beginner book 1) because the music in it was, well, non-musical.

The key here is that she should be enjoying this, not coming to her lessons and getting razed. She ain't never gonna be a concert pianist, but she just might learn to play for family gatherings and sing alongs.

One more idea: If you have another adult beginner at about her age/level maybe they would like a group lesson at regular intervals? The idea here is camaraderie and fun for both of them.

Above all, DON'T BE GRIM about this. Remember: She's an adult. If she didn't want to take piano lessons, she wouldn't be taking piano lessons. If she has a good time, she'll progress. If she starts to dread it, she won't.

Simple arrangements of movie theme songs mights be fun for her, and many movies have beautiful themes. It's sort of impressive, too.

Update:

Her daughter's wedding is finished, and she went away on a vacation herself, then came back for a lesson. She's doing much better, and i think that she was putting too much pressure on herself to progress while planning this wedding. As soon as I gave her permission to not make progress, but just to try and maintain and go through the old pieces she already knows, she was relieved. She also realized that she wants to spendmore time perfecting pieces before moving on, which is good news as well.

She told me at her most recent lesson that she would like to go into Adult Piano Adventures book 2 when she's finished with book 1, so that is the direction we will take. I think she's becoming much more patient with herself now, which is huge for adult students. In fact, I find this lack of patience to be one of the biggest stumbling blocks for adults. I'm patient, but they often are not, so it's great when they begin to understand they should enjoy the process.

Unfortunately, my other other adult piano student is on Skype, which could work, but I'm not sure he would be interested. I have an adult voice student, and she would be the only voice, but that might be good. I may be starting a piano student in December, so maybe having 3 would be enough to make it worthwhile, but not too large to be intimidating. Great idea!

Underlining mine.

I think this is the biggest issue. If the adult student doesn't figure this out early on, they just won't stick with it. Any coaching and reassurance teachers can do to help the student come to this realization is a plus, though in the end it is, imo (I'm an adult student), up to the student to work this out for themselves.

Patience--enjoying the process--is a skill the adult student will need, well, forever.

It is the same for children learners as well, but they are usually already in this mode, so we move on to their biggest issue: learning to practice regularly.

As I mentioned in another thread...a good adage for us adult students is "You can have it right, or you can have it right now....but, you can't have both!"

This story sounds like my own up until two months ago. I was on a mission to get through Faber Adult Levels 1 and 2 as quickly as possible, and it was eventually affecting my progress and the quality of my lesson time.

It came to a head a couple of months ago when I had a particularly bad lesson, where I was unable to play pretty much anything properly.

I throttled back, starting taking "incomplete" pieces to my lessons, and relaxed a whole lot. My tension during lessons decreased, and I'm no longer in a race with myself to complete Faber Level 3A. The pieces are getting harder, and more time is required to master them anyway.

Finally, I think my teacher is enjoying working with me more in this more relaxed mode to help me understand and master the fundamentals of this newer and harder material.

I also finally got over the rather silly notion that a failure to learn and perfect level 3A material quickly enough would earn me a demotion back to an earlier level with easier material.