I recommend two firm boundaries for parents who teach private music lessons to their own children.  (In my last post, I outlined some of the advantages teaching one’s own children music lessons.)

First, fix the lesson time and stick to it.  A specific time obviously helps the music student, but it also helps other family members.  Brother(s) and sister(s) can get used to occupying themselves during lessons at the same time every week.  In our family this was shortly after dinner.  My husband was home and could run interference, and we weren’t competing with as much of the neighborhood fun as we might have been after school.

Try to treat this commitment the same way you would if you actually had to go somewhere.  Put it on the calendar.  Mention it in the morning rundown of the daily schedule.  Ask a child to get ready 5-10 minutes early by washing hands and checking the assignment from the week before.  Make allowances in your own workload.  If you would spend a little extra time organizing a hasty dinner in time to make it a “real” lesson, do the same if you’re the teacher.  You can easily justify the expense of making do occasionally with some frozen food when you consider what you’re not spending on lessons!  (In fact, as a motivator, it’s fun to keep track of the money you’re not spending on lessons each month!)

Second, and I consider this one very important, avoid turning every day into a lesson.  As much as you can, refrain from correcting between lessons.  While it might be inefficient, refraining from correction prevents student frustration.  A lot of student frustration.  While I served as our children’s piano teacher, I tried not to listen when they practiced.  The guideline I set for myself was “Could a non-musician parent say it or do it?”  If the answer was “No,” I kept my mouth shut and stayed in the kitchen.  I commented only on things like their work ethic, their concentration, or their completion of the assignment as written in their notebook.  I reasoned that if I were not a trained musician, I would not necessarily know my son’s hand position was off, but I would know if he were daydreaming.  I might not know my daughter was playing wrong notes, but I would be able to see she hadn’t touched page 17 in her theory book.

I did, however, try to comment on their playing as a casual listener – again, the way I would if I were not a trained musician.  If I liked the song, or they played it especially well, or they improvised and did something fun and interesting, I piped up.  I told them I liked it, or that it was getting much better, or that it sounded fun.  In my mind, I was their instructor only for the designated lesson time each week.  I made an exception only if they asked directly for help, and this was rare!  Even then, I tried to answer only the question asked and nothing more.

This second suggested boundary could apply to any musician parent, even if you are not the teacher.   However, my hands-off approach is not the only view out there.  Admittedly there are several factors to consider, including student motivation for the instrument, the personalities of the parent and the child, the current season of the parent-child relationship, and many others.  The input of a musician-parent between lessons is less likely to be problematic if there is an outside teacher because the student then regularly hears from someone else.  If the musician-parent is also the teacher, and that teacher never stops teaching, the student never has time to experiment or make mistakes – both of which are essential to the learning process.  In this scenario, there is greater potential for conflict, overload, and frustration, which could lead to quitting – by student and teacher!

For some, then, the answer is an outside teacher.  I’ll address that practice in my next post.