Have you ever wanted something for your family so much that you planned it before you fell asleep at night and continued the thoughts as soon as you woke up in the morning? I wanted to develop confidence, character and million other qualities in my children but I was young and still learning what it all meant. My own love for playing the violin was something that certainly fell into that category for me. I wanted my kids to experience the incredible flow that came with playing in an orchestra or if they wanted to play in church, at a funeral, for weddings, whatever they wanted to do – I wanted it to be an option. Christmas evenings around the fireplace – playing Christmas Carols in harmony was a dream. If the kids weren’t trained, there would be no way for them to do this. I searched and found that even at two or three, they could start lessons. I was ecstatic. It wasn’t necessarily part of my dream to see my child playing a solo on a stage, with confidence – in a cute little dress or suit, but it did happen and was a great memory.

I think one lesson I learned during the process of learning to master an instrument is that nothing just happens. You don’t tune the violin and just start to play. Everything is a series of many baby steps forward and a few backward to reach a goal. And without a goal…it is just a wish. If we don’t know where we want to go….any road will take us there. We needed a plan. But as the mom, I learned another lesson quickly, one I couldn’t have really understood as a kid. As soon as you start to get a good pace of practicing and lessons, life gets in the way. You are tired. The laundry is in a pile, clean clothes and dirty clothes accidentally get mixed. The dinner turns out to be a salad or hot dogs, maybe a pizza. Money is tight but the teacher is still ready for the lesson. No practice takes place today. Maybe it won’t tomorrow. When you finally settle the chaos of the day down for a few minutes, your child is mentally somewhere else and they won’t have anything to do with practicing.

What is it that we are missing? Learning to play an instrument is an honor. Right? Haven’t you always wanted to play or at least improve on what you learned in the two years of lessons you took as a kid? And wait…..why just two years? Didn’t you want to practice? Ask yourself what happened. Why would you have stopped, basically before you started, with your piano lessons. Either you were a normal kid and didn’t want routine and being forced to practice while your friends were outside throwing a ball on the barn across the street or life got in the way with your parents or siblings – money, illness…. attitude. When did the excitement fade. Do you still love your teacher? Have you checked in on her lately? I am sure she wasn’t one of the ‘old school’ teachers who slapped your hands. So it wasn’t her.

As the years pass, excuses became just that. Excuses. We don’t always remember the ‘why’ behind our choices. Just the consequence.

When we want to achieve something big…it becomes painfully routine. (I will tell you about it later, but kids love to practice and learn amazingly quickly with the ‘Scales Aren’t Just a Fish Thing School Gum Drop Notes’, mp4 play-along music, mp3 audio and downloadable sheet music all color-coded to go into the backdoor of learning – going around the short circuits and roadblocks our minds have set up) Stick with me and I will give you a ton of thoughts to mentally chew on and a path to learning music that is simple and effective.

When we want to achieve something big…it becomes painfully routine. (I will tell you about it later, but kids love to practice and learn amazingly quickly with the ‘Scales Aren’t Just a Fish Thing School Gum Drop Notes’, mp4 play-along music, mp3 audio and downloadable sheet music all color-coded to go into the backdoor of learning – going around the short circuits and roadblocks our minds have set up) Stick with me and I will give you a ton of thoughts to mentally chew on and a path to learning music that is simple and effective. Whether you join the classes or not, hopefully, the next few emails will embellish your life.

As a parent, or a teacher, you have somewhat of an advantage over little people who can write their history on their hands and feet. You know where choices lead or at least have an idea of the possible paths a life can take.

Don’t cry because it’s over – Smile because it happened. But you have to start……for anything to happen.