Motivate Your Child to Play Guitar
Ways to motivate your child to practice guitar
Learning how to play the guitar can be a great experience for your child. Children are often excited to start guitar lessons and can’t wait to learn how to play a few songs. This excitement can quickly dissipate when they realize that the guitar is not as easy as strumming a few chords and learning a song. Learning the guitar takes time, and you’re not going to sound like your favorite rock star overnight. When your child starts to feel overwhelmed or just plain inconvenienced by learning how to play the guitar, how can you help keep them motivated?
David Joel has been teaching others to play the guitar for many years. Over the years, he has noticed that there are some common threads out there that parents use to keep their kids motivated and learning:
Be an example
Your child is much more likely to follow your example rather than your advice. This is the biggest tool you have to help motivate your child. If you play the guitar, your child will be more likely to also want to learn to play. Of course, you can still be an example to your child even if you don’t know how to play the guitar. Show by example of something it is that you love doing and make sure your child knows that you are sticking to it no matter how discouraging it can get.
Ask them to commit
It is so much easier to pick up the guitar if you have a practice space already set up. A good practice space should have a music stand, a chair without arms that is the correct size for your child, a guitar stand, and a table or desk to put picks, pencils, and other practice items on. If the guitar is already out and the music is on the stand, it is easy for them to sit down and practice whenever they feel like it.
Listen to music
Get your child listening to all styles of music from an early age. Make sure they easily recognize some of the hits of each era. It is much easier to teach a song to someone if they have already heard of it. If they do not recognize a song they are learning, make sure you make it easy for them to listen to the song several times while they are learning it.
Be involved
If you can, sit in on their lessons. If you know what is being taught in their lesson, you will know how to help them at home. You will also know if they are practicing what they are supposed to. Sitting in on lessons will also help you to create a relationship and dialogue with their teacher so you can easily ask about their progress.
Hopefully, this gives you a few ideas on how to get your kids motivated and practicing. When you give your child guitar lessons in Philadelphia, you are giving them a chance to understand music, an art form at its finest. The David Joel Guitar Studio wants you to encourage your child to play an instrument and the guitar is by far one of the best ones to start with.