On this episode of Rock School Proprietor Podcast, John Kozicki (Michigan Rock School and RockSchoolProprietor.com) and Mandy York (Music Time of Milford) dive into the common issue of parents withdrawing their children from music lessons due to a lack of practice. They explore alternative ways to measure success beyond just practice hours, emphasizing the joy and engagement in music as key indicators.
The hosts discuss real-life anecdotes and the importance of understanding each child’s individual learning journey. They highlight the need to communicate effectively with parents and redefine what counts as practice in the realm of music education.
For additional tips on talking with parents about practice, and how to take the focus off practice as the sole metric of success, check out Episode 4: What “counts” as practice? Redefining practice In music lessons
Join our private Facebook group, “Performance-Based Music Programs and Rock Schools,” a community for like-minded professionals to connect and share insights.
Episode Transcript:
John Kozicki (00:01.55)
What do you do when a parent decides to pull their child out of music lessons because they just aren’t practicing at home? If you’ve taught lessons for any amount of time, you’ve likely heard this. It is difficult to argue with that reasoning, and by the time you hear it from a parent, you won’t be able to convince them otherwise. So what’s the answer? Mandy and I think taking the focus off of practice as a measure of success is key. More on this episode of Rock School for Proprietor podcast.
John Kozicki (00:30.926)
Welcome to Rock School Proprietor Podcast. I’m John Kozicki. Mandy, we’re gonna talk about why parents pull their kids out of private music lessons today. And if I asked you what you thought would be maybe the top reason or some of the most common reasons parents will pull their kids out of music lessons, what would you say?
and I’m Mandy York.
Mandy York (00:55.704)
They don’t practice enough.
Ooh, yeah, they don’t practice, right? Which I don’t know. How do you feel about that?
Well, mean, we’ve talked about this in different episodes before. Practice looks different for everybody, and there’s a lot of different ways to practice. I don’t think that it’s a reason to pull your kid out of music lessons. I think you have to look at the whole picture. It’s not a reason. Is your child enjoying their music lesson? Are they listening? Are they?
How much are they practicing? And then comparing that to the other activities that kids are into, right? Think about that. Are they practicing for their art class and their Girl Scout troop and swim team? You know, how much of that are they doing at home?
Yeah.
John Kozicki (01:53.91)
You’re right. Right. I agree with you 100%. I think that is a pretty common reason. It’s a weird. It’s a weird thing to to use as the measure of success in music lessons. But for whatever reason, that it seems to be like so common, like parents just assume if the kid is not practicing, well, then they don’t like it or it’s like not worth it or or something.
But there, you’re absolutely right. There’s, I can’t think of another activity where parents are like, like you said, they weren’t practicing Girl Scouts. We’re done. I can’t think of another activity where that’s the case. So I think it’s probably, it’s gotta be a messaging problem from the instructors and from maybe the lesson studio. Instructors,
do perpetuate this, right? They say things like you really should be practicing 20 minutes a day or, you know, set a timer or like this many days a week you should be practicing. I think they’re perpetuating it. Why aren’t people saying like maybe there’s other ways to gauge success in music lessons and let’s maybe not talk about this weird metric of practice.
as being success or failure. I don’t So coincidentally, two weeks ago, I was at a birthday party for a friend’s son. He was turning 10. And about four or five months ago, the friend had said to me, Steve is his name. He said he said they were thinking about putting Dylan, his son into music lessons.
Yeah, I’m with you on that.
John Kozicki (03:51.67)
into guitar lessons and they were asking me some advice. Dylan had previously been really enamored with the ukulele. They went to Hawaii on a family vacation and he got a ukulele and he loved to pick it up and play around with it and Steven told me that he just never stops playing the ukulele. He loves music, he loves classic rock, he listens to a lot of the same songs that Steve listens to.
so they finally decided, well, let’s do it. Let’s, he seems to be consistently into the ukulele. He consistently loves music. Let’s get him into guitar lessons. not with me, by the way, this is, know, they, they live elsewhere. So it was not at my studio. So they put them in lessons and I was at the birthday party a couple of weeks ago. And so I brought up the lessons I said, so how’s.
How’s everything going with Dylan in guitar lessons? Steve said, yeah, he’s not doing that anymore. So that opened up the discussion, right? I said, well, what’s what’s going on? Why? What happened? And he said, well, he just I couldn’t get him to practice. I couldn’t get him to practice. He it’s weird. He loves it, but he loves going to the lessons. He still loves music.
Ha ha!
John Kozicki (05:19.554)
but now all of a sudden he doesn’t want to practice. So I started the discussion.
love how this happened to you in the wild.
Yeah, so right. Yeah. And I like that it was not. I have nothing invested in this, right? It’s not like it’s a parent at my music school. It’s you know, it’s just a friend. I’m just here to offer advice and you know, make casual conversation. If you were me in that situation, what would you say? Like, what would you ask? Would you like how would you address that that conversation?
Well, what I noticed right away is that dad said that he loves going to the lessons, right? Isn’t that what you said? He loves music. He loved going to the lessons, but I couldn’t get him to practice at home. I mean, I would ask, I might get nitpicky and say, well, how long, you know, how long was he taking the lessons? And how did he make, how did it make him feel? Obviously he loved it. Right.
What else does he have going on? Right. That’s a big factor.
John Kozicki (06:32.142)
Okay, well, so I asked some of those same questions. Let’s start with the, what activities does he do? What other activities? Because I did say that. said, what other activities is Dylan doing? And he said he’s doing swimming. He’s doing tennis. And he just started choir at school. And for choir, go, he goes early.
earlier than school starts. they do like a voluntary thing. he goes an hour early into school and they do choir. So he is doing some other activities.
And my response was like, well, so is he practicing those at home too? of course he’s not. Right. We did bring up or I did bring up, well, no, it wasn’t even me. was he, Steve had brought it up. He, he wasn’t sure he wanted to pay for the lessons if Dylan’s not practicing.
Mm-hmm for you. Yes
John Kozicki (07:43.31)
which I found kind of weird. So I pushed a little bit on that one. But and it wasn’t about it’s not really about money, though. That’s the weird thing. Because, for one, he told me what what he’s paying for the lessons and it’s like less than I charge for for the equivalent. And I in my assessment, it’s on the lower end. And monetarily, it’s like they’re fine, you know, they do well. So it’s not about
like they can’t afford it, but it was an interesting thing to put in there in the conversation.
think that happens a lot though. I think as parents, regardless of, you know, how much of their budget this is, Tiny piece, big piece. Like, if they don’t feel like they’re getting their money’s worth, right? I put my kid in something I want to get my money’s worth. I really do think I see that a lot. And even I have to admit, I’ve taken my girls to things where,
It really wasn’t a large expense. like, God, like I paid for this. I don’t know if this wasn’t that great of a program. You know, I don’t think I’m going to come back. But if I’m honest with myself, the kids probably loved it. know, thinking of like some sort of art project. I’m always looking for really quality art projects for my younger daughter. And sometimes I’m not impressed with them. But she loved it. She loved it. She had a good time, right?
Anyway, I think that that happens a lot. part of it is, well, here’s my next question is, did you say Dan? Steve. Steve, sorry, Steve. Is he a musician? No. He’s not. That’s a hurdle for us as teachers.
John Kozicki (09:33.687)
He’s not.
John Kozicki (09:38.19)
And his wife is not also.
Yes. So there’s…
He did take piano lessons when he was a kid.
All right, but he’s not playing anymore. No, no. Okay.
They probably played sports or were around friends that played sports. They have a better understanding of how these activities work and what progress looks like in those kind of extracurricular activities. As parents that are not musicians, it might be hard over them to see what progress looks like.
John Kozicki (10:17.144)
There you go, right? that’s, and then I think that goes, that sort of piggybacks or goes hand in hand with the money thing. I’m not gonna pay if he’s not practicing, right? So that’s that the only way that they can gauge success or failure in this situation is the kid practicing, right? Because it wasn’t really about the money.
because they can afford it, they don’t mind paying for it, but they’re seeing, well, the practice is not happening, so why are we doing this? Why are we paying for it? So that goes back to then us as a community of instructors and studio owners, we have to change that, right? We can’t perpetuate that idea of practice is the…
the measure of success or failure for these kids, right? Because the kids aren’t going to be able to articulate it. The parents are just saying like, not practicing. This isn’t working. This is not, it’s not the outcome that I’m expecting or that, that I want to see. Right? So I think that means we have to have those conversations and start projecting what the outcome should be. Or again, going back to the
the thing we talked about with practice, reframe what practice looks like, not just logging hours, right? Because if, let’s say in this situation, let’s say Dylan is still picking up his ukulele during the week and not guitar, should that count as practice? Hey, I think it should, right? It’s not the same instrument.
A lot of the same skills apply though, right? Right hand is gonna be the same, it’s all rhythmic. Left hand is gonna be fine motor skills and working those fingers on the frets and the strings. Yeah, it’s not on the guitar, but it’s still working the same skills that you use on the guitar. So, should that count?
Mandy York (12:32.266)
Yes, absolutely. But that’s not, but they see it as two separate things.
Yes, right. So that’s the, I think the importance of talking about what counts as practice or another, for instance, let’s say Dylan decides to read about Jimmy Page or some guitar player, spend two hours at a time watching videos of Jimi Hendrix playing guitar. should that count as practice? I think maybe.
Yes.
Mandy York (13:06.686)
I think so. Yeah, he’s being inspired by what he is. He’s learning in his lesson, right? These doors are being opened to him. He wants to know more. And it is more than just right hand and left hand holding holding an instrument.
Yeah. But from the parent’s perspective, well, it doesn’t look like what it’s supposed to look like. Right. So I think that we have to we have to kind of keep pushing that stuff out there. Yes.
And going back, like take a step back further. You mentioned it, like what is the metric? Well, what is your goal? Why did you sign up? What is your goal here? What do you want for your kid? Right. Right. I talk about this, you know, zoom all the way back to toddlers. I talk about this a lot. We are here because you want your kids to know music.
Because life is better when you do know music. Because when we start here and we learn this basic rhythm and basic tonal competence, as they grow up, they can take on different things, instrument lessons and such, if they so choose. Because we’re giving them this really strong base. Life is part of the human, or music is part of the human experience. parents, think about what you want for your child when you sign them up for lessons.
What would you say if, so let’s say you’re talking to Steve and his reply to that, what do you want the result to be? What if his reply was, well, obviously I want to see him get better at this instrument. And the only way to get better at the instrument, he’s got to practice. So what would you say in that situation?
Mandy York (14:52.398)
I mean, I would say if he’s showing out to his lessons every week, that is going to be progress. Okay, it might not be as much as you want, but it is something and he’s going to be making progress just by stepping into that room every week. It might be minimal. And that’s part of the process. As he gets to know his instrument, it’s hard. It’s really hard learning a new instrument. And you can think about it like learning a language. It’s hard.
He starts to learn this, you know, the physical instrument. He starts to put that muscle memory into his body. It will get easier. And then he’ll, he’ll be more inclined probably to dig in. There’s ebb and flow to learning music, learning in its.
I always say it’s a long game. Learning music is a long game. Learning an instrument is a long game. You’re not always going to see that practice. know, you, as you said, there’s peaks and valleys. You go through, you go through periods where you pick it up a lot. You go through periods where you don’t pick it up as much. Right. and some of that, and I know we’ve talked about this too. Some of that is simply what else is scheduled in your week.
Yeah, our kids have a lot on their plate.
Right? If Dylan’s also doing swim meets and tennis and choir, like on top of school and whatever other activities the family has planned. Well, is it reasonable to notch out enough time that is sufficient? mean, like you can, right? But then
John Kozicki (16:39.52)
Sometimes you’re just not feeling it. You know, you got to be in the frame of mind to pick up the instrument and play it sometimes. And I think we got to be sensitive to that and understanding. It’s delicate, right? But I think having these conversations with parents to help them see that, this logging time might not be the best metric. don’t know. It’s a one.
So what else would you maybe ask Steve in this situation if you were me?
We’ve talked a lot about Steve. think we could ask more about Dylan too. What are Dylan’s goals? We have established that he’s enjoying going to lessons. mean, if he is really enjoying going to lessons, I have a hard time pulling him from the activity, right? But let’s dig a little deeper too and find out what does he want? Because we’ve talked about this before. Could this be a case of he’s learning
like an old folk tune or country tune in his lesson, but really he wants to learn, like you said, Jimi Hendrix. Is there a disconnect there?
I did ask that I said, well, what is he learning in lessons? The response that Steve gave me is that his instructor gave him, because I said, well, what is he learning? What’s he playing songs? You know, what is he doing? And Steve told me that his instructor gave him quote unquote, some old country song that he’d never heard of. And and I said, well,
Mandy York (18:22.254)
Yeah.
John Kozicki (18:27.054)
Did does Dylan like the song? And he said, I don’t know, probably not. He listens to a lot of Led Zeppelin. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So there’s a disconnect, right? And that’s not Dylan’s fault. That’s not the parents fault. In a certain sense, it’s not the instructor’s fault either. That’s that’s maybe just how the instructor teaches.
But that’s definitely not going to help in this situation. So I know you’re big on this repertoire. What is the, what are they playing? Are they invested in it? So yeah, I did ask what he’s learning. Now as far as like what Dylan wants, honestly, I don’t know. And I didn’t ask Dylan.
Yeah.
John Kozicki (19:23.618)
But I know, Dylan’s a 10 year old kid, right? And I don’t know if, I don’t know if beyond like a simple answer like, I want to be able to play guitar. I don’t know if a 10 year old is necessarily going to be able to articulate what they want to do or what their goals are. And in my opinion, that’s where it’s very important for instructors to understand how to translate what the kid’s goals are.
Yes. So if they understand what the student wants to learn, number one, they can figure out what’s the best plan to teach the student those things. Number two, then they can translate it over to the parent because the parent’s not going to get that answer from the kid either, right?
Oh no. No. Yeah.
I also asked about the instructor, what the instructor said. And this was a little bit of a red flag for me. Steve had mentioned that the instructor called practice homework. He would say to Dylan, all right, this is your homework. This is what you gotta work on. To me, it’s a red flag, but I’m curious to hear what you think about that.
Yeah, I don’t like that term. I think, you know, just to give them the benefit of the doubt, we we say things like that all the time, right? Okay, guys, here’s your homework. Make sure you do that. Sure. You know, of course. But I think we just need to be we need to be careful with the words that we use, you know, so that it doesn’t come off as
Mandy York (21:08.376)
this is what you have to do this week in order to get your gold star. know? Yep. I understand that if Dylan is learning a song, he’s not particularly fond of, he’s not going to want to run home and play it. Right. He’s, he’s going to want to listen to something else.
What is, and yeah, homework is a weird term, but I think there are implications in the term homework. Homework implies a due date. Homework implies a requirement, not necessarily something that you want to do, but something that you have to do in order to like get a grade.
Yeah.
Mandy York (21:56.149)
or fail.
It definitely perpetuates that that thought process that we talked about regarding practice and that being the metric by which you’re measuring success or failure, right? Because whether it’s it’s blatant or subtle, I definitely can see from a parent’s perspective. And he’s got an instructor give him homework. He’s not doing his homework.
Yeah. Right. Yeah. We want our kids to be doing what they’re supposed to do. They said you have to do this. Yeah. And I’m not a musician. I have to take their word for it. Right. This is what you need to be doing.
What else would you have asked in that situation? Can you think of anything else that you would ask?
Mandy York (22:46.082)
I don’t know if I have any other questions here specifically. What this makes me think of though, is, in regards to other activities, we see the art show at the end. We, we see, the game on the weekend. go to the tournaments, right? If you’re sending Dylan in once a week and all you see at home is that he’s not really practicing it. I mean, I can understand for a parent that’s not.
doesn’t know music doesn’t play. can understand how they would feel that way. Perhaps this is why our group music groups are so important, right? Having these like concerts at the end where you can see that this is what they’ve been working on.
Yeah, it takes the focus away from that week to week. Are they doing what they’re supposed to do?
Because why?
Right, right. What are you?
John Kozicki (23:51.118)
Exactly. What are you working toward? If there’s nothing that you know you’re working toward, well then week to week, are you doing the work? Pass fail. Yeah, we got to change how we talk about this stuff as instructors and studio owners. You know, what’s funny is that I didn’t get to finish this conversation.
Yeah.
John Kozicki (24:20.6)
with Steve. No, it was birthday cake time. Yeah. For real. We were in the middle of the conversation and then boom, okay, cake time. I would have liked to talk about it more with him. And, you know, I don’t know if I necessarily would want to convince him because at this point it’s like he did say something interesting and I do agree with it. He said that he didn’t
He didn’t want this to be the end for Dylan. He wanted Dylan to be able to come back to this. know, it was very important for Steve that Dylan has this balance in life where it’s, you’ve got the academics, you’ve got the athletics, you’ve got some sort of art. mentioning, when he mentioned the choir that Dylan is doing, in Steve’s mind, that
is now fulfilling the the. Is it true right so I think that was for him a good trade off right OK well. He’s doing choir maybe we don’t do guitar right now so. You know I don’t think it’s the end hopefully it’s not the end it doesn’t I don’t think he wants it to be the end but the you know what happens next I’m not sure.
art requirement.
John Kozicki (25:47.854)
What would you, anything else you could think of that would be encouraging in that situation?
Yeah. mean, you know, emphasizing that you’re, you’re trying to grow a musician. sounds like he, what you just said, it’s important to him that he has this artistic outlet. Okay. So that piece is there. You’re growing a musician. It does take time and, a better word than homework can be a focus right now. We’re focusing on this. He wants to explore this artist, this shot, this genre, right? Let him, right?
right now he’s enjoying a new song he learned on the ukulele. Cool. Let him focus on that. Like have different focuses and, and you know, if you have an opportunity to work in a group, that’s great because like we said, having a goal, like a performance that you’re working towards shows growth. but reminding Steve that it’s, that it’s a process.
Peaks and valleys, it’s growing a musician, takes time.
Had I had the opportunity to finish the conversation or extend the conversation, I would have pushed a little harder on, is this instructor the right fit right now? And let’s talk a little bit more about why practice seems to be the metric. Those were the two that I would have sort of pushed on.
Mandy York (27:22.422)
Yep, changing the mindset.
Yeah. Well, with that. so cool. Interesting. It is interesting. So we’ll wrap this one up. Thank you for your thoughts, Mandy, because that was, it was my personal experience and I wanted to bounce it off you. All right, we’ll see you next time. See you. Mandy and I mentioned in this episode that we’ve spoken in detail about redefining practice in music lessons.
That’s on episode four, it’s called What Counts as Practice. If you wanna go check that out, we break things down and kinda create two different categories for practice, what we call skill building practice and experience practice. Again, that’s episode four, you can go back and check that out. Also, if you haven’t done so already, we’d love your help with ratings and reviews of the show on Apple Podcast and Spotify. You can do that right in both of those apps. It would really help us out and we’d appreciate it.
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