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Is your child really ready to learn guitar?
As a professional guitar teacher, I receive a large number of enquiries from parents of young children. In this article I want to talk about the unique challenges that I face when teaching children, and help parents to understand just what learning the guitar will actually entail for their child.
Many guitar teachers will teach children of any age. They’ll say something along the lines of: “Your 3 year old wants to learn to play guitar? It’s great they’ve developed an interest in music at such a young age, let’s get started right away!” Other guitar teachers have a lower age limit on their students and will not teach anyone below the age of 8, 9 or even 12 years old. They believe that children are not equipped to learn guitar correctly, both physically and emotionally.
I sit somewhere between these two camps.
It would be easy for me to say to the parent of a young child (typically aged between about 4 and 7) that I’ll take their money, regardless of how interested the child actually is in learning the guitar or how much the parent realistically understands about the process. In fact I have done this before, with the best of intentions I might add, and in the vast majority of cases the child has usually stopped having lessons within a few months. As someone who loves music and loves what I do, it can be very disheartening to see a child who was excited about the prospect of learning what they perceive to be a cool instrument decide that it’s not as easy as they thought it would be and give up.
And this for me is the crux of the matter: the guitar is not an easy instrument to learn to play. Yes, those guys on TV make it look effortlessly cool, but as adults we understand that they didn’t just wake up one morning knowing how to do that. It takes years of dedicated study to become a great guitar player; even those players who just want to learn to play a few chords and strum through some of their favourite songs need to put time into their playing. It doesn’t matter how great a guitar teacher is; the student will not progress if they are not willing to practice in between their lessons.
Older children, teenagers and adults understand this concept. Sure, some are more motivated and dedicated than others, but everyone knows that, ultimately “practice makes perfect”. Older children, teenagers and adults will often have a very clear idea of what they would like to be able to do on the guitar; they’ll have styles of music that they enjoy listening to, specific guitarists they admire and would like to be able to emulate and some kind of an understanding of musical concepts such as pitch and rhythm. These are all great motivating forces and for this reason, older people actually find the guitar easier to learn than young children.
A 5 year old child who sees a guitarist on TV has absolutely no clue what that person has gone through to get to that point in their playing. They see someone doing something pretty amazing and they want to be able to do it too. It’s hard to explain to a 5 year old the concept of practice so it’s my job to educate you, the parent, on what would be expected of your child if you wanted them to actually get results from their guitar lessons.
First of all, ask yourself: “Does my child genuinely want to learn to play the guitar or are they just interested in using the guitar as a prop while they pretend to be a rock star?” This is of course fine. I remember myself, at the age of about 3, getting a plastic toy guitar for Christmas one year. But that’s exactly what it was – a toy for me to fool around with. A few years later, my interest in music had not diminished and my parents bought me a real guitar and started paying for me to have lessons – I’ve never looked back!
As a guitar teacher I try my best to make lessons fun as well as educational, whatever the age of the student. But if you have any inclination that your child is not going to be focussed during the lessons or prepared to put in a little bit of practice in between them (I only ask about 10 minutes a day of my beginners), I would sincerely recommend that you think very carefully before buying them a guitar and signing up for lessons. It’s a little known fact that 50% of children who take guitar lessons actually give up within the first six months. Think of all those guitars going to waste! I would hate for one of them to be gathering dust in your attic.
Just recently I imposed a lower age limit of 6 on my students. I currently teach some 6 and 7 year olds who are doing brilliantly; we take the lessons very slowly and make progress in small steps. This is what you should expect as a parent. It typically takes a lot longer for young children to grasp the concepts needed to play guitar to a reasonable standard. I am always willing to see students of any age for an introductory session at no charge, but would urge all parents to think carefully about whether their child is really ready to learn.
