I had a frustrating practice with my son today. We played through one of his hardest songs together, with some mistakes. When we stopped to work on the section he was struggling with, he told me through his tears that with his “big fingers,” he couldn’t do it. With continued effort, suddenly he could do it. We repeated it correctly several times, and decided to call it a day. The reason we stopped was in part to finish getting ready for school, but also because of my frustration. I wanted to stop before I lost it.
Later, I happened to turn on the “Building Noble Hearts: Inside a Music Teaching Community” podcast that is produced by the Suzuki Association of the Americas. I happened to turn on Episode 4 – “Holding Two Concepts in One’s Mind.” The focus of this episode was on being present in the here and now, while still having a vision of the student or in this case, my child in the future. What does that vision hold? What do I want for my child?
I do this well with my students. I can be very “in the moment” in their lessons while still having a vision of where we’re headed long-term, both musically and non-musically, however, with my son it is much harder. One of the suggestions in the podcast was to make a list of the traits you want your child to have as an adult, both musically and otherwise. On the really hard practice days, go back and look over the list to help you remember why you’re doing this.
I decided to try it. I made a list of the traits that I want my son to have as an adult. As I sat and re-read what I had just written, I realized that today’s practice is not the thing in and of itself, but it is another step in the process of developing the man I can see in my mind’s eye – the man he is going to grow up to be. I felt much better about what we had done in his practice today and the frustration was no longer there.
If you have hard days practicing with your child, this exercise might be worth a try. For the record, just because I teach Suzuki Violin and Viola doesn’t mean this journey is easy.
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