Loving Practice, Developing Discipline: A Parent's Guide To Turning Music Lessons Into Life Lessons

The opportunity to develop musical talent is one of the best gifts you can give your child. From personal expression, to the joy of sharing music through performance, to brain development, to the benefits of being in a band, to the deep connection formed with one’s cultural heritage, music yields incalculable rewards to those who pursue it.
    The problem every parent runs into sooner or later is that developing into a true musician is hard. So hard, in fact, that most people want to give up somewhere along the way (maybe multiple places along the way). And this is completely normal, because making music is one of the few activities that intensely challenges us physically, mentally, and emotionally — all at the same time.
    The good news is that this intense difficulty may be the most valuable benefit music has to offer. The very fact that something so intrinsically rewarding is so difficult gives us the opportunity and motivation to develop the character traits that lead to great success and happiness in life: discipline, curiosity, grit, and, ultimately, the skill of engaging in deliberate practice.
    This book is about how children can learn to understand themselves and their own internal motivators to make the challenging process of becoming a musician a joyful journey. If we can teach children to engage in learning such a complex skill as music in ways that work for them, we will have given them one of the most powerful assets of all: self-knowledge.