Piano Class

"When you're a little kid... you're a little bit of everything. Artist, scientist, athlete, scholar. Sometimes it seems like growing up is the process of giving those things up, one by one. I guess we all have one thing we regret giving up. One thing we really miss... that we gave up because we were too lazy... or we couldn't stick it out..."

Diehard fans of the hit TV series, Wonder Years (1988-1993), will recognise this narration from the protagonist, Kevin Arnold, in one of the episodes. In this episode, Kevin recalled the arduous piano lessons that he had to take from his cantakerous piano teacher and how he desperately tried to prove himself in a concert. He subsequently gave up piano and twenty years later, reminisced about those days with regret.

Incidentally, Trivia No 1: It was from this episode that I first heard and fell in love with the classical piece by Johann Pachelbel, "Canon in D major". Trivia No 2: Son No 1 would have been named Kevin if we had wanted a Christian name for him - just shows that I really loved the series. [In fact, in his cohort, there are many boys named Kevin, and I am sure their parents were similarly influenced!]

Reminiscence aside, when I look at my boys now, the universal themes featured in the show still struck a resonance with me, like this one that I extracted above. As parents, we try to expose the children to many things, not because we want to pressure them to excel in all activities, but it's more like, to give them a chance to discover their talents or interest. Sometimes, however, interest takes time to develop and one needs to stick it out. That is the difficult part.

Son No 1 gave up piano when he was 6, after attending classes for two years - which is not bad, I guess. I allowed him to give up because he would be crying over the piano when practising, so what's the point? But sometimes, I do wonder, would he have learnt better discipline in life if we had insisted that he continued? A music education does instil discipline, if nothing else.

Son No 2 is now learning piano. This is his third attempt - or rather, my third attempt - at getting him going at it. The first attempt was in a class setting in a music school but the teacher was fierce and demoralising and the class was moving too fast. I then switched him to a private teacher who came to the house - but this teacher was uninspiring, to say the least. Now, I send Son No 2 to a music school for a one-to-one lesson every week and it is so far so good. Teacher Jennifer clicks with Son No 2 and I can see she is a good teacher - "good" as in she can relate to young children and adopts suitable teaching pedagogy. The only tough part is trying to get Son No 2 to practise at home. He is not enthusiastic, but luckily, not obstinate. I try not to pressurise him too much and so, I set the bar really low. But I do insist that he tinkles on the piano almost every day - 5 or 10 minutes will do.

I am now contemplating starting Son No 3 on piano next year. It will be interesting to see how things will work out with him... After all, one never knows and the mother can only hope!