My child is really naughty in practice time

Okay this is the big one. Stay calm, you’re in expert hands...

-  Get yourself a practice chart. Establish a reward scheme with your child for seven good practices. Offer them something they won’t get otherwise, and that you know they really want. We recommend experiences over objects - a trip to a city farm is way more fun than yet another plastic toy - but go with what you know will work. The seven practices don’t need to be in a row, and your child willstill get a sticker for practising if they are naughty during those practices. However they will only get the main reward when you get to seven well-behaved practices in total. It might take a few weeks or even months if things are really bad, but don’t worry, you will get there eventually. Make sure you are clear about your expectations, and read the rest of the practising help section on this site. Naughtiness is generally about something else, so expect a lot of overlap with the other topics listed here, and try to work out which one is the root cause of your problem. 

-  How do I use the practise chart? Give your child a gold star for practices in which there is only good behaviour, a silver star for a reasonably good practice, and a blue star (or whatever colour you choose) for a practice that gets done despite naughtiness. That way you can praise them for doing practice, even if it’s with some naughtiness, but also track the really good practices. Alter it to suit your circumstances - if you think seven is too many to aim for initially, start with three. If you feel that the most you can expect right now is a silver star practice, offer the reward for seven silver stars with an extra bonus for any gold stars they earn. There are no rules about this, so go ahead and make up your own...

-  What do I do when my child is actually being naughty?Try to get one step ahead of your child. Talk to them about how nice it would be to have a cooperative practice, how good they will feel if they do well, and how proud their teacher will be to hear that practice is improving. Make sure they have eaten and drunk something, that they are not too tired, and that you are in a good mood. Start a rainbow system with your child (it will help to have a colour picture of a rainbow to hand - even a hand-drawn one will do - just ensure that green is in the middle of the rainbow). Use a counter and start them on green, and move them up through the colours if they do well. If they are naughty, move them down through blue towards violet and tell them they can work their way back towards green again. Warn them before moving them down, but just move them up every time you feel they deserve it. If you stay on violet for more than five minutes, end the practise, put them on the naughty step, and tell them they can try again tomorrow. If you don’t already use the naughty step it’s easy to find through a google search.

-  Make sure your demands are reasonable, and praise your child often for the things they are doing well. Try to give them as much control as you can without letting them run all over you, and ensure that you are giving them more attention for good behaviour than you are for poor behaviour. 

If you think the root cause of your child’s bad behaviour is that they don’t want to learn their instrument, work out what you can do to inspire them. Take them to a concert, show them clips on YouTube, discuss the negative effects of giving up, both in terms of missing out on group lessons and concerts (generally the most popular part of the learning process) and also what it means to quit on something. In the end you have to choose between gritting your teeth and getting through a rough patch (everyone gets through it sooner or later, but it’s no fun while you’re in it) and letting your child give up. This is an individual choice and depends very much on your motivation for starting your child in the first place. If you do think your child should give up, please talk to your teacher (or Kate, the director) about it before you decide. 

Playing music is fun and if your child is not getting the fun from it there are lots of things you can change before you change whether they do it or not. If you didn’t get paid for going to work, the chances are you wouldn’t go. (Lucky you if you would do it for free but don’t have to!). Your child cannot see the long view of learning to play an instrument, so practice is like work to them. Don’t pay them in cash, obviously, but do make sure there are enough benefits to make it worthwhile for them until they play well enough to do it for the love of music. It’s a long road before you get to that stage, so be prepared. Make practices enjoyable in every way you can, offer appropriate rewards, and tell your child that one day they will play like the big kids on the videos, but only if they keep plugging away at it. 

The only children who fail to succeed with the Suzuki Method are those whose parents allow them to give up. If you do let them stop, that’s fine as long as you’re doing it for the right reasons. If it’s because it’s too hard, or they don’t enjoy their lessons, or they don’t like to practise, all these things can be changed. And then they will still learn to play beautiful music, which is the gift we all intend to give them.