Our Immersion in Talent Education

Our preschooler, M, loves music. A lot of her play has always involved singing, dancing, playing instruments, and doing "concerts" for us. She was drawn to a ukulele we had in the house when she was little and we came to think of it as hers. We took Music Together classes-- parent and child circle time to sing and make music-- a few times. Those were a big deal to her. When we had a teacher who played the guitar, M wanted a strap just like the teacher's so she could walk around with the ukulele hands-free. One summer morning, wandering around our yard, our three-year-old strummed and belted out verses about the hammock, the dandelions, the grass, the flowers. When we had a teacher who played the cello, at home she planted the ukulele on the floor and knelt behind it and all sorts of things stood in for a bow to scratch against the strings-- a magic wand, a ruler, a xylophone mallet.

Back in the ukulele heyday

I never would have thought about music lessons for a kid so young. As parents, we've never wanted to push our kids to do or be anything, but wanted to wait and see what they were interested in. But last summer, even though she was not yet four and a half, she was showing us how much she'd absorbed about making music already and was asking for more-- literally, telling us she wished she could play "an instrument with a stick."

Our local music center offers the Suzuki Method, or Talent Education, where kids as young as three can learn an instrument. The approach was created by Japanese violinist Shin'ichi Suzuki, who had an epiphany that very young children learn to speak their native language fluently-- first sounds, then words, then sentences. They don't learn to read and write until much later. Suzuki applied the way kids learn language to the way they are taught to play an instrument. We have been doing violin lessons twice a week since early September-- a private lesson and a group class with the other kids at her level. The group class is about community, playing for and with others. The parent is an integral part of the program. Parents have to rent a full-size violin for the year, too! Parents have to attend every lesson and learn everything the child learns. Parents are responsible for practice at home, and the goal is every day.

Kids learn by practicing not on an actual violin at first, but on a "box violin" you make at home with a small box (we used a mac and cheese box) and a paint stick attached to it. They learn to hold that appropriately, name the parts of the violin, and master some rhythms through clapping and other movements (I remember sliding our right hands up and down our left forearm for every syllable for "Mississippi, Stop, Stop"). Then there is a "practice bow" (a wooden dowel) to learn to hold and move around, and eventually kids earn their actual instrument to learn on. They have to master their grip on the bow (every finger has its proper position) through many repetitions. Eventually they learn to play songs that involve working the strings. All this time students regularly listen to a CD that includes the first songs kids would be taught to play so they can internalize them.

 We haven't looked at a sheet of music yet (because reading music, like language, won't come until later). But M can recognize and play several pieces. She can correctly hold the instrument in play and rest positions, she knows how to pack and unpack it, to put on the sponge (shoulder pad that goes on the back with a rubber band), to tighten and loosen the bow hairs, she knows to check for her curved pinky and bent thumb and hugger fingers on the bow, to make sure she keeps a just-right baby bear wrist and that she has her jaw-- not chin-- in the chin rest, to make sure her fingers sink all the way in on the strings for the right sound... There are SO many incremental, cumulative skills involved in learning this (any?) instrument. We are impressed with what she has mastered, and with the program. These are some memorable moments from this journey:

In October one day at her private lesson, M's teacher told her she had earned a practice bow (we only had the "box violin" up to that point), and signed out to us the wooden dowel in the basic shape of a bow that she would practice skills with, especially how to hold a bow. On the way home in the car that day, holding it and pretending to play with it, she said, "I earned this bow? What do 'earned' mean?" She was even more elated once she internalized this concept. So much pride, the words were catching in her throat, she couldn't get them out fast enough. "Does W [her older brother] know how to use this? I will be The Teacher. I will tell him he can't use it like a sword...I will be SO SO SO happy when I earn my real violin."

Early fall, before she'd earned the violin, when she used our ukulele as one

One day not long after that, we were in the car and M was "playing" her box violin and said to her brother, "W, I am bigger than you with my violin." In response he gave her irritated matter-of-factness about their ages, but she only persisted, sure of herself on this matter: "NO, with my violin I am bigger!"  

In early November, M had mastered all the things on her checklist that were needed to earn her (actual, rental) violin. We picked it up from the music shop a few days later. She was so excited. It was a big day with a LOT of violin playing that I will never forget. (I had never even known violins came in sizes but when I first saw this 1/8 size one, I was taken aback with how adorable an object it is.) 

Unpacking the violin for the first time

In February M wanted to bring her violin into preschool for her share day. With all her peers in a circle inching closer, she got it out and got it ready. There were a couple moments where she paused, made silly faces, and didn't respond to the questions and comments coming at her. And then, just when I was wondering if she'd actually do it, she put her violin up, paused as she got her fingers where they should be on the strings, marked by the tapes her teacher had put there, and played the most polished "Monkey Song" she'd done yet. She paused after and there was a flurry of comments, and she said, "Now I'm gonna do Descending A Scale" and played again. My daughter can take months to talk to a new person, she needs to observe for a long while before joining into a new situation. Yet she also has a side of her that really craves the center of attention; she would like to have us all sit on the couch for hours at home to watch her perform songs and dances, and a microphone is one of her very favorite toys. I can't help but wonder if the violin-- or something that involves music or performance-- is how this introvert finds her voice and confidence in the big noisy world.

We've taken the kids to concerts in our area when we can, and M is mesmerized when her instructors perform in group class. Often when she is supposed to be getting ready for bed, or when she is sitting at the dinner table, her eyes close a little bit, she holds a silent violin and bow and imitates the fancy fingerwork, her foot moving to the beat, lifting her bow off the strings with a flourish every now and then. (She also likes to play one string at a time while listening closely with furrowed brow, then pretend to turn the pegs and fine tuners like her teacher does, even though she knows she's not supposed to touch those.) She emulates the musical skills and styles she soaks up. In the beginning, I wondered if real lessons and practice every day really made sense with young kids. I knew that maybe someday M would look back and see the rewards of daily practice, but she didn't now understand the long term. I had a slight worry that if violin became something we do all the time or a have-to, we'd risk taking the joy out of music which she'd always done so freely. But I've been really pleased that her lessons and experiences this year have continued to fuel her interest in music and show us she wants to know more.

Loves to help use the tuning app

Now it's April and we're all quarantined in our homes. M had had a Suzuki showcase concert lined up last week. Of all the cancellations we've had, this may be the most heart-breaking because she still talks about it daily. Happily though, M's weekly private violin lesson is just about the one thing that we've not had cancelled because we now meet her teacher face to face via a Zoom meeting in our living room every week. M thinks practicing "with Miss Emma on the computer" is an exciting novelty.

Remote lessons

Finding Our Stride with Daily Practice
Practicing every day has been a learning curve. There were days practice started to become a battle and we'd all get upset. I quickly realized that we simply couldn't allow that to happen. We could not squash her joy in finally having her own real instrument. She might not always remember the pieces she was playing now, but she'd remember how practicing with us made her feel. We still make mistakes or lose our patience at times, but luckily she, like most kids, is forgiving and resilient. These are some of the things we've learned that help daily practice go better for us:

• Practice absolutely must stay positive.  
• Practice needs to be about love and connection between parent and child.
• Don't practice every skill every day, as that becomes tedious. 
• Keep sessions brief (not more than 10 - 15 minutes).
• Always name and reinforce what she's doing well.   
• Go with the flow when she has a different idea about what to play next. Letting her have some control makes the whole practice go better. 
• Not every practice will be equal. There are days or weeks where energy for violin is higher and more focused and others when it is less so. Even getting it out to play for two minutes on a busy, non-ideal day helps her grow and fosters the practice habit. 
• Practice when it works. We haven't found a time that's always good. So we practice at different times-- before breakfast, after school, before dinner, before bedtime-- depending on the day. If we haven't done it yet, she tends to remind us. 
• Timers can help. We sometimes set a timer and say, when it rings it will be time to practice. Or, tell her to have her violin unpacked and ready to go before it goes off. We set the timer generously so she can almost always beat it but it keeps her motivated and saves us from saying, "Time to practice" over and over. 
• Be patient and have age-appropriate expectations. For example, I learned that practicing something "one more time" to try to get it more solid or work on a part of it was incredibly disagreeable to M. So I stopped asking her to do that and learned to just wait till we tried it again tomorrow. Now, she's reached a point where sometimes she suggests playing something again herself either because it's a fun new piece or because she realizes something doesn't sound right.
• Play fun games during practice to keep it interesting... 

Learning how to hold the box violin

Playing a duet

Motivators and Ways to Make Practice Fun and Kid-Friendly
A couple times as a parent I have briefly thought external rewards would help train a behavior and it never does, at least with our kids. It causes undue stress when the thing is not earned, and their focus becomes the prize not the skill. The motivators that have helped keep her going are silly, preschool-friendly games we play as part of the ritual of practice. Most have worked for a while but not forever, and then we move on to something else...

1. Light a candle at the start of practice and then let her blow it out at the end, to show the effect of incremental practice with the shrinking size of the candle.
2. Make a list of the skills to practice for the week and let her put checks or tally marks next to them each time we do them.
3. "100 days of Practice" chart. Her teacher just gave us this in February, and she makes that special "x" on each number after another practice. (Helps her learn counting patterns, too). 
4. Let her set up a stuffed animal to "watch" her practice.
5. Put a tiny little toy up on the violin and see if she can keep it balanced as she plays.
6. Barrel of Monkeys: hang one more monkey up for every ___ during practice (rhythm played/portion of practice/whatever the goals are that week. Find different places to hang the chain of monkeys. We've hung them on the pegs of her violin and on the branches of our Christmas tree for a while. 
7. Let her be "the teacher" and parent is the "student." She demonstrates a skill and then we practice it. Some days we can even make lots of requests as the student: "Can you teach me the first line of Twinkle?" "Does my hand look right?" It's a simple difference in how we use language, calling her the teacher. But it seems to inspire her to do her best and we've had some of our best, longest practice sessions like this.
8. Draw a picture for her incrementally, adding one more bit to it for each skill/song she does in practice. She loves to guess what it will be. At the end of practice, it's a complete monkey or house or butterfly. Like all of the above, the drawing is not dependent on her tasks being done perfectly. It is simply to represent that she did it. 

Our son also started learning an instrument this fall-- the piano-- with his dad as teacher for now. It's been a very natural extension to expect him to practice each day too (and it's nice that he can be more independent in his practice sessions). When and how long we practice might be up for grabs, but whether we do it it is not a question now as it's become a routine. I've come to see it as a little gift to our kids that we invited the idea of daily practice into our family. M can have fun pretending to be Natalie MacMaster with her jaw-dropping fiddling and simultaneous food stamping but she is also beginning to understand that daily practice is how she got there. That developing understanding is bigger than violin. After M's 7 months so far on violin, we can already say, "Remember when you were just learning how to hold the violin?" And she can look back and feel the difference from where she is now. She's learning that not everything is easy right away, but it can be learned. Our Talent Education violin experience connects with a book I read several years ago, Carol Dweck's Mindset. It's a great book with a lot in it, but my take away was that I want so much to foster a growth mindset in my kids-- willingness to try, perseverance, knowledge that we can be good at things with effort and by choosing the right strategy.

In his book Nurtured by Love Suzuki wrote, "I am not engaged in Talent Education in order to produce musicians, nor do the children participate because they want to become musicians. But anyone who has cultivated her musical ability to a high degree of accomplishment will demonstrate equally outstanding ability in whatever other field she chooses to enter." He felt that cultivating an ability-- educating a talent-- helps a child develop "sensitivity, discipline, and endurance. He gets a beautiful heart." Suzuki discussed all sorts of evidence for his beliefs-- including Albert Einstein, whose parents had him learn the violin from the time he was six, crediting his physics discoveries with his own talent education: "I owe my new discovery to intuition honed in the world of music." All I know for sure at this stage is that music is a bigger presence in our home than it ever has been and it has had good effects on all of us.

She wants to learn the piano, too