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Any piano teachers out there who agree that teaching one's own child is a rewarding experience?

Disclaimer: IANA piano teacher.

But I am a mom of three older teens, and I'm here to say that every single one of my experiences with attempting to formally teach things to my own kids (Sunday School, summer school "enrichment" activities, recorder, guitar, piano) have been complete disasters. "Mom as teacher" NEVER works, in any field, in my opinion.

I have been teaching for over 18 years and now have 3 of my own teenagers, 18, 15, and 13. I have taught them all to some degree, but they have all had much more success with other teachers. I have found, however, that my boys were more receptive to my teaching than my daughter, whatever that means, I don't know.

No matter how carefully I approached a "teaching moment" my children many times would perceive the comments as personal attacks instead of suggestions.

Another teacher can say exactly the same thing and my children have all responded well to the other person.

If it works for you.....good luck! I opted for spending the money and saving the parent/child relationship.

Charlene

Glenn Gould was taught by his mother up until he was 10.

I wonder what happens when a father tries to teach his own daughter? Ruth Slenczynska was taught by his father. That was child abuse apparently and it was not clear if she had a brother learning with her as a comparison of father teaching.

It is really strange to know that Mozart was taught by his dad and Bach taught his own sons too but these days I have heard so many stories of parents (especially mums) not being able to teach their own kids as it destroys the relationship. Do you have a say in this?

IMHO, I don't believe that comparing "teaching relationships" or relationships in general between parents and their children in 2005 vs. the days of the "old masters" is a fair comparison.

My wife is a very very good player. She would even think of teaching the boys. She can't even make suggestions to my boys without them taking it negatively. The same comments from the teacher is at least accepted.

In observing how we are doing with my 4 year old daughter I think it comes down to this. Sometime between praising our babies we transition to negative feedback vs. postive. It is in this transition we seem to loose the credibility in their eyes.

Opps in my haste

"She would "

Should read " She wouldn't"

It's difficult. I think most of the time the parent and the child just wind up in a major POWER STRUGGLE contest.
Just take me and my nephew for instance, I( or he rather) can't even get pass the 'sit still' stage.
But I've friends who are decent pianists, and their children seem no less amazing than them.
I think it's a problem of letting them get use to this 'I teach u, u listen' routine in the earlist stage possible.

I've been teaching my sons (10 and 11) for about six months. They had the choice of me or a teacher and chose me. I'm not a professional music teacher but I do have a teaching background in sports and academics, and solid piano and music theory knowledge. I've found it to be very rewarding, but I've learned a lot. We've had plenty of tears and bad feelings, and also some fun and pride.

Here's my short list of lessons learned so far and I hope this thread continues with other suggestions and lessons:
1. Be organized and professional; have lesson plans and learning objectives.
2. Follow a progressive, age-appropriate curriculum (I'm using Piano Town and Alfred as the base).
3. Use lesson time more for teaching than evaluation (I still need to work on this; what I think I need to do is have them self-evaluate and ask for help where they need it).
4. Remember that lesson time and supervised practice is "quality time with dad," so include a lot of fun, opportunity to perform, and especially doing things together.

My most successful teaching tool so far is to have them pick a popular song they like. Then we listen to it on the stereo together and pick out the melody. I have them pick out the first few notes of each phrase and then I help enough that they can get the whole melody in 15 minutes or so. Then I let them play along with the stereo a few times. Later I score the song with a simple one or two note left hand.

These are the songs they sit down and play for fun and to perform for friends and family. It gives them ear training and a little theory (we talk about what key the piece is in). Mostly it's a fun and cool thing we do together.

I need to find more of this kind of learning activity and I think we'll be successful.