When you sign your child up for activities, you do so hoping to give them skills that will last a lifetime. While sports may teach teamwork, playing the piano can sharpen the intellect, calm the mind, and offer lifelong health. 

So how do you keep your child playing the piano? Invariably, there will come a point when they proclaim their boredness, and whine about wanting to quit. How do you encourage practicing when they don’t seem to show any interest? 

While there isn’t a foolproof plan to push them to the next level, there are a few things you can try. 

Monitor the way your child learns

We all learn differently. We all look back at our time in school and remember one or two teachers who stood out. That works for everything in life. Some piano teachers will connect with your child differently than others. It’s important to find one that works well with the way your child learns. Often, piano teachers can also make recommendations. It’s no fun for a teacher either if it always feels stressed throughout the process. 

Restructure practice sessions

The old method of timing your practice sessions is outdated. Setting a timer for thirty minutes, for example, will leave your child counting the minutes. Instead, structure lessons to encourage playing. Warm ups, goal-derived practice, and playing their favorites as a cooldown is a much better approach. For smaller children, even ten to fifteen minutes of structured playing can do wonders to keep them motivated and increase their skills accordingly. 

Encourage practice through rewards

What makes piano apps and games so exciting is the concept of winning rewards. You can do so in real life too. Set up a point system to allow your child to trade in practice points for small rewards. You can make them piano related – new sheet music – or expand it to bigger rewards, such as something PC related to encourage their music skills even further. 

This is about knowing your child and what worlds well for the way they learn. 

Kids today learn differently than we did as a child. Don’t be disheartened if they whine and complain. Instead, look for ways to encourage them, knowing playing the piano is a lifelong skill they can use in so many ways throughout their lives.