your role as a parent of a music student
October 21, 2019
your role as a parent of a music student
It is our purpose, with your help, to bring your child an education in instrumental music. In order for us to do this successfully, we must clearly understand our respective responsibilities. That is the purpose of this message.
The study of instrumental music requires the student to assemble the various activities of the aural, visual, and tactile senses simultaneously. This assembly enables the senses to support and strengthen one another in such a way that training is received in concentration beyond that which any other academic subject can offer. Studies at Harvard, UCLA, and Oxford show in detail why student musicians take the majority of college scholarships, and are usually the class leaders.
So, while we are all for the enjoyment and social advantages which instrumental music can bring your child, we tend to think of them as bonuses. The real reason for instrumental music is its ability to help your child learn how to learn.
This brings us to your first responsibility as a parent of a student musician. The only unknown variable in the successful pattern of instrumental music study is the paternal attitude. How do you feel about music study for your child? We'll first outline the two extremes of paternal attitude for you. This will help to focus on the one attitude which will insure success for your child.
Extreme #1: "My child is going to have music whether he likes it or not!"
Se call this the "cram it down their throat" approach, with which the child might be successful in spite of the parent, but not because of the parent.
Extreme #2: "we're going to give our child the opportunity to have music, and if she doesn't like it she can quit because we're not going to force it on her."
Our advice to the parent is to forget it and spend the would be wasted tuition money on something worthwhile, because not one child in a hundred will sustain themselves in the study of instrumental music any more than a normal child always wants to go to school, go to church, go to bed, eat properly, brush their teeth, or do any one of the 1001 other things that parents know children must do.