Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Piano Teachers Forum Do children progress faster than late starters

You can pay attention with just your mind, or your whole being. Children learn in the zone.

"Children" is a broad term: in the case of children learning to walk, or to talk, it is AMAZING how focussed they are at acquiring the new skill, and how undiscouraged they are when they do not immediately succeed. Adults are often terribly easily discouraged when working on acquiring new skills, and while they may have the ability to focus on a task at hand, they don't have the deep commitment to gaining skills that very young children do have.

Children also may seem to lack focus, but that is generally because they are not focussing on what someone else wants them to focus on. They are great at being focussed on what interests them. As a teacher I've often found that a child might seem to be off on a tangent, but when I take the time to figure out their train of thought I discover just how seriously they are working on an idea, skill or issue.

Hey, welcome to PW Elissa! You're real smart, do stick around.

Thanks keyboardklutz (goodness, I feel really impolite calling you that!) for your welcome!

Just read some of your blog. Not just a pretty face then?

Don’t we have brilliant minds here? Welcome Elissa and thanks for sharing.

That's kinda my point. In a great many instances, they did not choose, their parents did. While you may be able to get them focused for the short time you are teaching them, there are repeated posts by teachers here expressing frustration at not being able to get them to continue that focus at home. The adult beginner chooses for him/herself to learn. I believe that is a distinct advantage.

Perhaps, but it would be very presumptuous to assume that I or any other adult beginner do not or cannot do so as well.

Hi Elissa,

I am celebrating being able to welcome you to the forum as you have not only something very worthwhile to say but you do it with humor too. I've read all 5 of your to date posts today and your website and I'm excited to think that things are picking up in the Piano Teacher's Forum! Welcome!

Betty

Try it. Children are not miniature adults, they often go where angels can't tread. (or am I being presumptuous?)

Children benefit from having their brains wired for learning in a way that adults do not.

Adults can benefit from experience, but I have come across adults who do not have much experience and/or don't know how to learn from it.

The biggest hurdle for adults is coordination/movement. They tend to try to solve problems with their brains, thinking that if you know how to do something, you will be able.

Children, especially younger ones, are less likely to ask "how." You show them something, they try it, fail, and try again. They're used to working out coordination by themselves, whether it be holding a fork, opening a door, or figuring out a video game controller.

If you take a kid into Best Buy and lead them to the video game demo, they'll walk up to it and start playing, even though they have no idea what the controls do. Hand an adult the same controller, and they'll ask "so what do the buttons do?"

Find an adult who's comfortable diving in and playing the game, and you'll have somebody who will make remarkable progress at the piano, because they won't wait to be told "how" all the time.

I've always wanted to design an experiment where you take 10 adults with desk jobs and 10 construction workers, physical/occupational therapists, hair stylists, gardeners/florists, or surgeons and teach them all to play the piano. I have a theory that the people whose jobs require solving problems with their hands will do much better than people who type and talk for a living.

(I could be totally wrong, but it'd be a great experiment!)

Yes, you are being presumptuous in assuming I have not already "tried it", or that I don't make it part of my learning approach.

I think so too, and moreover I find it comforting.

I'm a slow learner because I'm an adult, not because I'm inherently untalented or unsuited to the task. I know if I keep plugging away I'll continute to make slow progress.

The adult who expects he can learn as quickly and easily as a child is the one who gives up when he finds out differently.

I don't think there's really any doubt, adults learn music and languages more slowly than children, but at least some adults can reach impressive levels of performance at both.

The question I would have is whether this implies a different approach is needed. If adult learning uses different mechanisms rather than being a slow version of the same process, which seems likely, then the optimal teaching strategy for an adult is probably substantially different.

Exactly. And how many beginner classroom teachers do you think I've seen trying to address mini-adults? It's a rare individual who, as Wordsworth says, can bind 'each [day] to each by natural piety.'

Of course, and every adult method I know of is quite a bit different from kids' methods. There have been a ton of presentations on the subject of teaching adults at the major conferences, and it's something that continues to be discussed and studied in pedagogical circles.

That being said, one of the main problems is that since adults have such a wide range of prior experience and ability (much more so than children), it is extremely difficult to come up with anything specific regarding adult instruction that works for a large number of people.

Also, it may be better to ask some of these questions in our Adult Beginners' Forum. You'll get a lot more information from people who've "been there, done that."

I've just read the Gieseking book as well as Music by Heart by Lillian Somebodyorother (we adults have a terrible time with memory) and I can't imagine a young child getting much out of the concepts or the structured memory approach both those teachers use.

You get a six or seven year old and show them something (a passage for instance) once (knowing what you're doing) and you won't need to show them again. That ability kinda disappears around seven.

A lot of people are down on the usefulness of Hanon...however, it's a Godsend for late starters. I started at 16 after some time playing guitar. Without Hanon, I don't think I'd be working on what's in my sig.

I'm not a teacher but I am in a situation where my son and I both take lessons. He's 8 and has been studying for a few years now. I find that for him , 40 minutes of regular practice everyday keeps him moving along well. That's not nearly enough for me as an adult late starter.

I know every situation is different but this is how it is (unfortunately!) in my home.

Elissa, it was a pleasure to read your words this morning as a student.

Hi guys, I am an adult beginner and just wanted to throw this idea out there...

The universe of adult beginners is self-selective; it is pretty much a given that all adult beginners are very motivated to learn the piano.

The universe of child beginners is much less self-selective; some children will really learn to love the piano and others will hate it and fight it the whole way.

This may explain why there are plenty of children who fizzle out and never get anywhere learning the piano while at the same time allowing for the fact that those children who end up really loving the piano will progress faster than an adult beginner, on average, due to an inherent learning advantage.