Creating a student

One thing that was difficult for me when starting WonderGirl on an instrument was getting rid of my expectations.  It has been almost thirty years since I was a beginning student and I remember ALWAYS standing politely and calmly during lessons.  My mom might beg to differ... ;)  But when I would try to get her to focus on something at the beginning, she'd wiggle and giggle like we were playing around.  She didn't know any different!  But the tricky part was how to turn her into that stands-at-attention kind of student, and not freak out and lose patience when she didn't immediately do it.

The breakthrough came when I decided to teach her how to read using this book:

Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons

It doesn't have anything to do with music, but it has everything to do with a super simple way of sitting down with your child and guiding the learning process.  I had heard raves about it for years from all different kinds of parents who swore by it, and it totally lived up to the hype.  It teaches new concepts in tiny spurts and gives the child the chance to use what they already know extensively, so it builds their confidence level as well as teaches them in a simply fantabulous way.  And it gives the parent every single thing to say so it teaches you how to teach.  My confidence level grew too!

After about a third of the book, I introduced piano with our budding teacher/student relationship.  Plus, piano is such a visual instrument that her being able to read really helped her progress and get into playing and learning it herself.  Once we had that structure, adding the violin was a natural step.

Little by little, bit by bit our relationship has grown in ways I am SO thankful for!  I love being her mom, but I never thought I could love being her piano/violin teacher as much as I do.  What a blessing it is!!