How To Support Your Child Through Musical Setbacks and Frustration

Learning how to play an instrument is a process that takes time and effort, but is ultimately extremely rewarding and produces the joy of making music. 

As musicians, we will face challenges and setbacks. While these setbacks can be frustrating, they are valuable instances for character growth and learning. 

As a parent, we may not always know how to best support our young musicians when they face frustrations in their musical progress. 

In this blog post, I'll share practical ways you can help to support your child through musical setbacks. 

Listen To Their Frustration

When young musicians face frustrations it’s important to listen to their feelings and validate their experience. It might be challenging to sit with our child’s strong emotions, but it’s important to stay open, listen, and acknowledge whatever is bothering them. 

Perhaps your child has been practicing a skill or piece of music for several days and they feel like they aren't making progress. Or maybe they just took an audition and didn’t perform as well as they would have liked. 

Before we try to offer advice or change their mind, it’s important to listen to their perspective. This will help them to feel heard and eventually move past that emotion. Try using validating language like “I know you’ve been working so hard on this piece and it’s really tough and you feel like you just can’t get it. It must be so frustrating to feel stuck!”

Acknowledge Their Hard Work

When children face musical challenges, it's helpful to highlight the effort they have been putting in and acknowledge all the progress they have made. Acknowledge how far they have come and all they have accomplished.

I make an effort to do this with my orchestra students in class. For example, I might remind my students that a few weeks ago we were just at the beginning stages of learning the piece, and it was hard, and now they’ve mastered it. I might say, “Look how far you’ve come in just a few weeks. You’ve really worked hard on this piece and mastered it. Great job!”  

Help your child to develop a growth mindset to see failures as moments for growth rather than setbacks. 

Work Through The Challenges

Once you’ve moved past the challenging emotions and acknowledged your child’s hard work and perseverance, it's time to make a plan for moving forward. When 

For example, perhaps they’ve started working on a new piece of music and they feel like they aren’t “getting it.” Find a way to break the song down into manageable chunks so they can be successful. Help your child move to tangible ways they can address the challenges they are facing. 

That might look like learning a few measures at time, doing some slow practice on a difficult section, playing the hard section 3 times with no mistakes, or having them mark sections in their music with fingerings or other helpful markings - you can help them to practically work through their practice struggles.

Practice With Your Child

As your child begins to work through the frustrations in their music making, consider sitting with them as they practice to support them and encourage them. 

You don’t need to be a musician or know exactly how to play music to support them and cheer them on. Sometimes just sitting beside them and offering positive reinforcement can make a big difference.

Conclusion

Every musician will face obstacles in their musical journey. 

Challenges are natural and a part of the process. 

As parents and teachers, we can help our children develop perseverance, patience, and a growth mindset by first listening to what their challenges are, encouraging them, and helping them see challenges as a catalyst for growth.