Big Boy and I started learning the violin last year (15 Sept 2018), when a teacher we’ve been wait listed with since May 2017 finally had a weekend spot free up.

He has progressed very well so far – he’s already at ‘Etude’, the 12th song (out of 17 songs) in Book 1, which seems to be reasonably speedy. Kids typically take between 1-2 years to complete the first book. Younger kids especially take a long time on pre-Twinkles / Twinkle (up to a year), whereas he completed Twinkles by Christmas last year.

Apart from some struggles in the early months, and the occasional tantrum / bust up, I don’t really struggle to get him to practice. We practice every day except individual lesson days (which he had insisted be practice-free very early on, I agreed to it then because our practice sessions were mentally gruelling, and have been fine with sticking to it, given we are still making good progress), and very rare exceptional days, e.g. the days we are taking flights for holidays, or have an exceptionally packed schedule where we can’t even fit in 10 minutes, and two days recently when he was super ill with gastroenteritis.

Depending on the day / how much time we have / what we need to work on, we (he) practices anywhere between 10 – 60 minutes, although the practice sessions are usually between 30 – 45 minutes. This compares to the minimum ~15 – 20 minutes that his teacher suggests for 5 – 6 year olds, and the ~10 minutes that Big Boy’s classmate just about manages to do each day.

Basically, I’ve never subscribed to the philosophy that we should aim to practice a certain amount of time, especially not at the beginning of the instrument learning journey, especially for young kids. Instead, I’m all about aiming for a certain number of ‘good’ or ‘acceptable’ repetitions. At the start of our journey, it was 5 good repetitions, now I aim for 3 good / acceptable repetitions of his top song.

At the very beginning of our violin journey, that was a bit of a tough sell to Big Boy, who kept asking how much time has passed, how many minutes he practiced, and asking me why we were doing so much more than what his teacher suggested. And when I asked him to repeat a certain movement / bowing / fingering / song, because his earlier efforts weren’t sufficiently good / acceptable, he would argue with me that it was fine, and it’s not fair that I said it wasn’t and ask him to repeat etc.

So I had to explain the rationale behind my practice philosophy, which is influenced by my pole teacher who insisted that I repeat each new move 3 times in each lesson so that my body / muscles will remember it, and also by something I read on a good friend’s blog – “practice doesn’t make perfect, practice makes permanent”. I also had to take pictures of videos of his practice as evidence that he didn’t do something well enough, otherwise he would argue with me until the cows come home that I’m lying… 🙄

Happily enough, now that he’s kind of used to my philosophy, and possibly because he sees how effective it is, he’s quite co-operative most of the time. Although today he did argue with me about his intonation, and I had to film him again. It definitely helps that occasionally we wrap up our practice super early, in 10 – 15 minutes, when he just zooms through his repertoire perfectly, so he sees the benefits of aiming for good repetitions instead of time. And I also get brownie points for being flexible occasionally, e.g. only play some of his review songs on some days because he’s extra tired or we are going somewhere.

Nonetheless, Big Boy still prefers practicing with Papa, which happens on the infrequent occasions I’m stuck late at work, because he thinks it’s more fun / less stressful practicing with Papa. I’m definitely stricter because I know what mistakes to watch out for / correct, and I’m also a bit perfectionistic. But he also likes it that Papa asks him to improvise as part of his practice, which I think is a great idea because it lets him experiment / play with his instrument in a creative way. I’ve since also incorporated improvisation by letting him choose if he wants to spend extra time on improvisation after we’ve done all the required practice.

Most importantly, Big Boy seems to enjoy learning and playing the violin and seems to be intrinsically motivated. The teacher offered him stickers, but he didn’t seem to care about it. And when he’s annoying / uncooperative, I sometimes threaten to stop violin lessons or throw his violin away, and he gets really upset and insists he wants to continue. In fact, he often asks me about how long it takes to learn the violin, how many Suzuki books there are. I tell him that it really depends on his interest level, how much and to what level he wants to pursue violin. And he says he wants to do everything. He also says he wants to do the piano (because it has more notes), and the drums (because it is violent)… but I tell him to stick to one instrument for now.

I think the fact that I’m also learning the violin – he sees me practice, and sits in on my lessons, contributes to Big Boy’s motivation. He sees that I care about the violin and put in the time to practice, he sees me struggling and then overcoming hurdles. And we also have a loose competition going on, to see who will finish “all the Suzuki books” first. I think he will win, whereas he thinks I will.

And so for now, even though Big Boy learning violin is a lot of work for me – trekking a fair distance to lessons on weekends, practicing every day (even on holidays), and also informally teaching him music theory – it’s also very rewarding because he enjoys and seems to be quite good at it.

I worry about the sustainability of this fairly intensive Suzuki parenting when it will be Baby-F’s turn to learn instrument. I’m not sure I will have the time or the patience to supervise two sets of music practice. Although Tiger mum Amy Chua managed it…

For now, I’m also slightly anxious about instrument selection. Baby-F has most consistently expressed a preference for the piano, although he used to often pretend he also plays the violin, and recently he occasionally says he wants to play the cello. His recent preference for the cello is mostly drive by the fact that it is called “大提琴”(literally “big lifting zither”) vs. violin “小提琴” (literally “small lifting zither”), and bigger is obviously better from the viewpoint of a 2 year old. I prefer him to learn the violin because it’s portable, we’ve already found a good teacher, logistics would be easier, and the instrument is more affordable. But I worry a little about having both boys play the same instrument. I’d like them to have less competition and more differentiation. But I guess I have a bit more time to think about it…