My Child Won’t Practice Guitar (How can I help as a parent/guardian?)

I teach plucked strings for all ages, and I get lots of questions from parents about how they can help when their child won’t practice. It’s a complicated question, different children have different needs. Age, experience level, genre, mental/physical disabilities, and much more all influence what kind of practice a child needs. Much like babies do not understand object permanence, children younger than 10 may not even understand practice. They will require regular support from a parent/guardian.

The important thing is you are here as a parent reading this article, and so you have already begun supporting your musical child, even though this may be your first music lesson experience too! After you read this blog post, I hope you’ll have some tools that will help you help your kiddos! First, let’s start with some of “don’ts”:

1. Don’t threaten to take away lessons. Negative reinforcement will not help a child learn to play an instrument. This means that punishments like grounding, spanking, or taking away lessons are useless tools in the music world. Lessons are not a fun luxury like ice cream and video games, they are enriching and educational. If a kid acts up in school, you can’t punish them by saying, “no more school!” If anything, they might need more school and more enrichment programs to support their proper growth. They need serious structure, but in a positive way.

2. Don’t put your hands on your child’s hands when they are playing their instrument. Kids are funny creatures, and it’s easy to accidentally teach them something incorrect. By putting your hands on the instrument,  you may inadvertently train your child to correct her hands with her own hands. Yes, this is as confusing as it sounds. Kids may also begin to copy your “technique” instead of their teacher’s technique. Sometimes, they’ll make mistakes nonstop, for the whoooole lesson. It makes you, the parent, feel like you’ve got to do something to help. But this is a natural part of the learning process, and your child is doing just fine. 😀

3. Do not restrict practice hours. Children should be able to practice as they please. Some like to practice more in the mornings, some more in the afternoon, some at night. This is normal, and by restricting practice such that your child cannot play in the evening, they may simply stop practicing altogether. Most of you reading this are parents of kids with plucked strings: at least it’s not a trumpet or a drum set. If you have an electric guitar and an amp at home, you can purchase headphones that plug into your amp.

If you’ve made it this far, you’re probably thinking “What can I do”. Here’s some things you CAN and absolutely should do. Some of these things will simply help your child practice more, and some things will boost motivation and deepen the relationship you both have to music, and to their instrument.

1. Help with practice time. Practice needs to occur at least 4 times a week, preferably 6-7 days a week. But a 5 year old will not be able to practice as long as a 15 year old. Remind your child to practice but also to take breaks every 30 minutes. Take breaks every 8-15 minutes for really little kids. Also, no student should be practicing a single exercise or song for a whole day. Each day, students should have multiple exercises/songs to work on, to keep things fresh.

2. Setting up the environment. Piano kids have the easiest time with this part. The instrument comes with the perfect seat and music stand! Guitar and other plucked strings are more complicated. Your child should have access to an armless chair. Young students age 10 or lower will benefit from a smaller seat, around 14 inches in height. They should have a music stand or desk where they can put their music (or camera for online lessons). You may also need to tune their instrument for them regularly, and you can ask your child’s teacher to teach you this if your child is too young to tune themselves.

3. Listen to music. It’s one of the easiest but most overlooked steps. It’s a great way to increase practice motivation and self esteem in students. First, you can ask your teacher for some awe-inspiring guitarists to listen to. This will give your kid something truly great they can aspire towards. Second, you can just listen to random music that they like. Ask them “on a scale from 1-10, how much do you like like this song?” This will make the student ask themselves, what do I like? Even if it’s unrelated to the instrument/style they are learning, that’s ok. It’s about self discovery!

4. Ask the teacher about short term/long term goals. Some students have simple short term goals, like not sticking out your pinky finger while plucking or strumming. Relaxing the shoulders. Some students will also have long term goals like playing for a concert, recital, competition, or family gathering. As the parent you should know these short and long term goals. Even saying them aloud to your child will remind them about things they forgot during the lesson, and will make their practice super efficient!

Teaching someone to play an instrument is a lot like planting and raising a tree. You can only set up a proper environment and regularly water them, but you can’t do the growing part. The same is true of students. We give them a proper environment, regular reminders, and music to listen to. We bring these factors to the highest quality, in part by communicating with the teacher. Then it’s up to the student.

“You cannot accelerate the growth of a tree by pulling its branches” – Ricardo Iznaola, On Practicing