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Interesting - apart from the use of past tense instead of present tense I could have written this post almost word for word! (although I haven't been put in the 'sin bin' and banished from lessons yet!).

I'm probably more actively involved in daughters violin lessons than her piano - but thats because her teacher makes a point of involving me - asking me to watch from certain angles, comment on various technical aspects, occasionaly accompanist duties etc etc (even getting me to engineer a crude 'bow correction tool' out of a toilet roll tube, a pair of scissors and a couple of blobs of bluetack!). But still my involvement is driven entirely by teacher direction and she remains the undisputed 'director' of the 3 person team!

I usually try to restrict my conversations to the very beginning or very end, and mostly be an observer in between.

Me too - except I'm sitting in on my son's piano lessons. I don't say a single thing unless prompted and our teacher clearly lays this out in the policy. I'm biased towards allowing a parent to sit in if the child is ok with it. If my son ever wanted to take his own notes and kick me out, I'd be fine with it.

I think an involved and engaged parent can be a music teacher's greatest ally. But interrupting during the lesson? Particularly mid-piece? Yikes. I agree this behavior is extreme. I would definitely let the parent know that you appreciate their involvement, but you would prefer to drive the lesson. Maybe give them a moment to say something at the beginning and ask questions at the end. My daughter's violin teacher particularly a nice method of saying to my daughter at the beginning "so if there anything your mom might like to tell me before we start?" and at the end "anything else mom might like to ask before we finish up?". Our piano teacher particularly encourages e-mail use for questions.

Now, you see, I would see that as a problem too. The kid probably deals with is because he's used to it. But still a problem that likely won't go away by itself.

Hi, checking in here with an update on this situation.
Here's what happened:
I had a quick chat with the dad before his son's lesson yesterday and borrowed Minnie may's line suggested in this thread , "sometimes I choose to ignore issues because they're not central to the skill we're working on at the moment". I felt that this went well. Dad was very apologetic and said piano lessons are brand new for him as a parent, he wanted to support his son by sitting in on the lessons, but he was not aware of "piano lesson etiquette".
It really is up to us as teachers to not be afraid to bring up issues with parents. I was afraid of offending the dad in this case. But the short discussion went well.
He went out and ran an errand during the lesson.

I'm glad. Well done you for broaching this in such a way as not to have him lose face. I do wish they would all care so much!

It was tricky and I was nervous about offending him. I did mention that I wished every parent cared so much like he does. I felt like it went O.K. Thanks very much for everyone's suggestions here!

This is awesome, Barb860 -- it sounds like the conversation went the best direction possible! And I love that he's just being over-zealous in his support -- I mean, isn't that way better than not caring? I'm glad this went well for you!

It's still jarring to see my "name" in a thread title ...

This is the outcome I probably would have forecast. It's easy to build a mental image of grand confrontation on the horizon when the real issue is a bit of overzealous insecurity on his part.

And you do want parents who care.

Hey, you're famous!

Yes he is!
and so is his cat, "Piano Cat", who we haven't heard about lately....does he miss Piano Son, away at college?

Alas, Piano*Cat passed away about a year and a half ago:


Lance the Piano*Cat

So sorry to hear! I must've missed your post a while back....Piano Cat was quite unique, sitting on laps like that at the piano....

I dont have a cat - but until recently our dog (Xena the King Charles Cavalier Spaniel) may have been a contender for "Piano*dog". She sleeps for approximately 22 hours a day (being an old dog) - and manages to ignore almost all manner of noises coming from the Piano, but she DID have a habit of waking up and coming to investigate whenever I played the slow movement of Beethovens Pathetique... No other piece of music seemed to get her attention - but any time I started playing the Beethoven she'd wander into the room approach the bench and see whats going on.

I have no idea whether there's something deep in this particular work that has an effect on a canine amygdala, or whether I had subconsciously got into a pattern of playing that just before feeding her and the association had somehow stuck - but I'm sure it was something truly remarkable as I'm almost sure she could identify that piece distinctly from others!

Alas this behaviour has stopped (I dont play the Beethoven so often any more and I think the dog may be a little hard of hearing these days anyway) - so my chances of a creative piece of research resulting in a PhD in Psychology have no doubt passed.


[sorry - completely off-topic!]