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I recently doing an average of how far my piano parents drive to me for piano lesson...this is what I got:
6.78 miles
I took their home address and google map to see what is the distance between their home to my studio and add up everyone then divided to get the average.
The longest distance I have is 18.5 mile and shortest is 0.9 mile.
How about your studio? I am interest to see other piano teacher doing the calculation and compare the numbers to find out what is a reasonable drive for parents to come to piano lesson?
Thanks!!

My most-distant student drove 3 hours, but that was just for a summer of coaching.

In my regular studio, the furthest away is 20 miles. The closest is 1 mile. Most are about 10-15 miles away.

It really depends on the family. I've had one family that traveled 36 miles one way to have lessons (in traffic, the drive takes one hour), and it was a case where the parents are much more serious than the kids. And then I've had over a dozen kids who can walk to their lessons. They are some of the most dedicated, hard-working kids anybody could have asked for. I've taught five kids who live on my street!

I have known students who drove 1.5 - 2.5 hours one way. When your goal is studying at a top conservatory, attitudes toward driving distance evolve.

I drive 147 miles (one-way) to my trombone lesson.

When "parents" are mentioned, young children must be meant. While teens and adults might have the stamina, I think a 2 - 3 hour weekly commute for a child would be exhausting for a young child and such an arrangement wouldn't last long.

I don't know people regularly doing 2-3 hours, I don't think. But 1-2 hour commute at our top notch music school isn't uncommon. This tends to be done by the extremely dedicated parent/kid combos, but all of them aren't even necessarily super advanced. Happy to be commuting less than 5 miles.

People do it, but how it is for the kids? The parent may be "dedicated", but it's the child who has to do the traveling, concentrate in the lesson, practice during the week etc. I had a neighbour who was about 17 when she was given a fantastic opportunity by a retired top teacher. Her parents drove her to another city every week - a 5 hour round trip - and if you heard the playing soaring out of that window, you'd know it was worth it. But she was not a young child, and she was definitely aiming for a career.

Why do you presume that? I had a late high schooler in mind, actually. Their parents are unlikely to give them the car keys and wish them a pleasant commute.

I presumed nothing but did surmise. The title says "How far are parents willing to drive for piano lessons?" I also know that more young children take lessons than older ones, and the asker's site gives me the impression that younger children are mostly involved.

In any case, "parents willing to drive" automatically excludes the idea of handing over car keys.

I did, in fact, hand over the car keys to my son as soon as he had his driver's license. The school was out of the area, and with rehearsals at 7:30 a.m. or going on to 10:00 p.m. or later, this was much easier on me.

That's today with our sissified kids. In the 1950s, I made a weekly R/T in our VW 90 miles each way, for my lesson. And that included driving through some really nasty Michigan winter blizzards.

You must have walked barefoot to school too, and uphill both ways …

Just tweaking you.

Funny you mention that. Now that I think about it, I did actually give my eldest the keys so he could drive to Virginia Beach for his weekend horn lessons. He was seventeen or eighteen. Ah, how quickly we forget. And as keystring notes, it sure is easier that way. Except for the accident statistics for young male drivers in the first two years after acquiring their license ...

I'm not writing about what is done but what is optimum. A six year old child, for example, traveling an hour after a full day of school, for example, will be tired and not have the same concentration regardless of how much he "sucks it up". That was the same in the 1950's as it is now. I am interested in what is optimum, not in what trends exist either now or back then. These days kids are also yanked out of the home early in the morning because both parents work, and don't get to go home after school for the same reason. The kids of the affluent - who tend to be those who have lessons - are also over-enrolled in too many activities so that we constantly hear about both exhaustion and disinterest. Is it good because it's done?

Although I miss some things, I am not nostalgic for the good old days. There were right things and wrong things. But basically I look at what works and why it works. When it was done doesn't give me that.

I rode a school bus every day for 1 1/2 hours, and then had to do farm chores since my parents elected to become farmers, when I was a teen. I survived it and got a university education to boot. I also could not study the things I was interested in because there was no Internet so we were stuck with what was available (read: not much). We also had the idiocy in Canada's cold north that girls had to wear skirts. If "sissy" means to be like a girl, try standing out in subzero temperatures in howling wind waiting for a drafty rickety school bus while wearing shorts with bare legs if you're a guy. Just because we could do such things (had to) doesn't mean they were good.

Let me tell you that learning how to extricate myself from ditches, after spinning out on ice a couple of times, taught me how to really drive on snow and ice. Experience the best teacher? To keystring's comment - if we deny our children experiences, how will they ever grow up? Can life be learned from an xbox?

Been there, done that. Much of Michigan is further north than a lot of the Canadian populated areas. At -15 or -20, slacks or no slacks is of little consequence! BTW, there is a school of thought which states that adversity is actually good for our development.

BTW, have you ever heard trees explode because of the cold? It's rather awesome.

Does it make a sound if there's no one there to hear it?
or perhaps more to the point, is it any less awesome?

I'm talking about northern Ontario, not the south where the weather is tempered by the Great Lakes (which also seems to be the case for Michigan). I doubt that you have ever stood outside in those temperatures for any length of time with bare legs, but I can tell you that any clothing makes a difference. In regards to freezing in the cold being "good" for you - day in and out means being sick a lot: sore throat, fever, running nose, coughing. Losing fingers and toes to frost bite is also not that great for the constitution, and believe me, these things did happen. By the way, we staged a sit-in one year and got the school administration to use its brains finally - slacks were allowed thereafter. Oh the lovely 1960's!


Like rifle shots that echo in the silence. Yes, it is. This happened in the warmer snowbelt region which I think is at the latitude of Michigan. Further north you have only coniferous trees and these don't seem to behave the same way.

Hey, you can get the rifle shots of trees exploding way down south in the land of cotton. Ice storms are awesome if you're in the right frame of mind.

BTW, all this competitive whining about cold and youthful endurance is becoming rather amusing.

I confess, the coldest it ever got when I was young was -42. Northern Ontario certainly gets colder!

And Keystring, once the lakes freeze over, which they did back in the 40s and 50s, they might as well not be there! No warming whatsoever.