The Myth of Self-Starting

This post may have a few things to say to my teens and adults, but this is mostly for my younger students and their parents.  Since at least 2014, I have had the following section on my official policy.  I've underlined the most relevant part for this post.

• If your child is under the age of 10, they can really use your active involvement.  I encourage an adult to sit in on the lessons and then be willing to coach your child at home.  I have found that students stick with lessons longer when a guardian is actively helping them.   Please also understand that is not normal for a child to practice regularly without prompting.  Practice is work, even if they really want to learn piano, and is highly unusual for a child under 12 to be self-responsible in this area.

One of the things that scientists have learned in recent decades is that your memory is largely fiction.  It's not a tape recorder, but rather a movie that idealizes your past.  It also gets blurred with how you felt at the time with how your experiences have changed you since then.  I know from Facebook posts and the memories section that 2013 was a tough year from start to finish.  However, I don't feel that way any more, because one of the good things to happen from that year (and what seemed mostly like stress until near the end) has had huge positive impact on my work since then.  My current reality has re-written my impression of the past.

A lot of parents get upset that their child isn't practicing on their own because they expect them to be self-starting.  Nothing has ever saddened me more than when a parent withdraws their child from lessons because "they're having to be told to practice".  If they're in middle school or beyond, okay...I see your point.  If they're still in their first decade of life, I don't think you have realistic expectations.  Part of the justification for that is that you probably feel like you were a self-starter at that age.   Here are three statements about that, and I am willing to bet that at least one of them is true for everyone.

(1) You actually weren't a self-starter.  Your parents or guardians probably drove you to do anything that felt like work.  If you don't remember this, it's because of (once again) our memories' tendency to idealize the past, give ourselves more credit than we deserve.

(2) You never always feel like doing the things that require effort NOW.  But as adults, you learn to weigh the consequences, or trade-offs of letting it go versus doing it anyway.  This is a trait that has to be learned, and not at the young age you might hope as parents.  (And let's face it...quite a few adults actually DON'T do anything optional that feels like work, but that's another topic).

(3) You might have actually been a self-starter, but your parents somehow came up with the right motivation for you to do that.  Maybe it was some sort of incentive or reward.  Maybe it was nothing conscious on their part, but you noticed that they treated you in a more positive way when you were working hard compared to just taking it easy.

Until you accept that something that feels like work is going to be a challenge, you can't move-on and actually become a self-starter.  Here are some ways to do that at any age.

• Schedule your time on paper or in an app.  Block out your fixed activities (like work, school, appointments, homework, this lesson, etc) and look at what time is left.  Plan your practice time and officially schedule it as an event or activity that you agree to do.
• Log your practice time.  If scheduling is the before, logging is the after.  How did you do?  Write down the day, how much you practiced, what you practiced, what was easy, what was difficult, and what the next day's priority is.
• When possible, always schedule practice before something leisurely, rather than after.
• Give yourself a reward that is contingent on reaching a level of success with your work.  For example, every 10 hours of good practice (logged), give yourself a reward: a new pair of shoes, a nice dinner, a road trip, a movie, etc.  For the incentive to work, it has to be something you ONLY do when you succeed at your goals.  If you do it regardless, it is no longer an incentive.
• If you're more motivated by negative goals, give yourself a consequence as a goal of not achieving something.  For example, if you like dessert, you don't eat anything sweet on days you fail to practice 30 minutes (or whatever you had scheduled).  Or maybe you don't watch television, read your latest book, or play a video game.

Anyone can be a self-starter, but parents...PLEASE don't expect your child to magically inherit this trait.  It takes time and a lot of effort on your part as well as theirs.  In my mind, the biggest success I can give my students is to have the ability to someday learn a piece on their own, but I have to teach them the right way for them to do that and not solely depend on me.  Your goal as parents of piano students should be to train them how to respect the time and effort it takes to practice, and how to cope with getting it done even when they don't feel like it.  Until they get to that point, keep reminding your children to practice each day.  There's a 0% chance that I'd be writing this blog if my mom hadn't done that with me on a daily basis until I was probably 10.