Has your daughter expressed interest in learning to play the guitar?

Parents often ask how old a little girl must be before she can take lessons. They watch their daughters go crazy over Hannah Montana and Taylor Swift, two talented young stars who are cutting a path for a new generation of female musicians. Making music looks like great fun… and indeed it is! It’s no wonder little girls daydream about being onstage creating that wonderful sound, being so cool and full of life.

Children are emotionally and mentally very active and as equally resourceful. Learning a musical instrument can give them an opportunity to channel their energy into something fun and creative. But you and your daughter should be prepared to address a few important issues before you decide to throw your money into guitar lessons.

Physical Maturity is required

Childhood is a great time to learn about music. Like little sponges, kids readily embody music without any assistance. They dance and sing with complete abandon and joy. But even though they really like the idea of making music, learning an instrument can be frustrating for a child, because their hands are so small and tender. Tiny fingers have a difficult time winding their way around the neck of all full-size instruments; however, these days even the youngest children who want to create music have some options.

If your child is very young, six or under, and is obsessed with the idea of playing music, consider the violin. There is a highly successful children’s ear-training program for the violin, taught by violin instructors everywhere, called the Suzuki Method. It’s not hard to find inexpensive tiny violins made to fit a small child’s hand. Though there are exceptions, I hesitate to recommend other stringed instruments for children under the age of seven. Allow your very young daughter the option of changing instruments if she still wants to learn the guitar after trying the violin.

If your child is between 7-10, she should be big enough to manage a ukulele, a mandolin, a junior-size guitar or a small body guitar.

• A ukulele is a four-stringed instrument that is played using chords. Ukuleles were popular during the 1920s and 1930s. Considered novelty instruments today, ukes are still used on camping trips, as a traveling companion, and for songwriting support.
• A mandolin neck will also fit a child’s hands, but she will have to learn to hold two strings down with a single finger; that in itself is usually a show-stopper.
• Junior-size guitars, seen recently in the guitar marketplace in pink and other happy colors, are a fine size to start lessons with, though you can expect the majority of them to have problems getting and staying in tune. Please do not let tuning precision become an issue for you or your daughter — most of these junior guitars just are a step up from toys. But they are affordable, good learning tools without a doubt and a great introduction to a full size instrument.
• Small body guitars are not as popular as the dreadnaughts commonly used in bluegrass circles, but are easy to find. Not toys, the finest will be made from 100% wood with a very light and somewhat delicate finish; however many of today’s guitars are made with composites and sound wonderful. Manufacturers like Martin, Gibson, Taylor make some of the world’s best guitars, but there are many copycats out there worthy of keeping for life. A great guitar is all about its sound and stability and you’ll find fine models in all price ranges. Many vintage guitars appreciate in value and are considered great investments as well.

Your daughter’s hands will be ready for a full size guitar when she’s between 10 and 14. Note that the necks on most guitars are pretty much the same length – the major differences in guitars concern the materials they are made of, the size of the body and the grip of the neck. Some necks are slightly thinner than others and are basically crafted to accommodate a lady’s hand. There are many models of fine guitars with different body styles. Look for one small enough that your daughter can get her strumming arm wrapped comfortably around the body of the guitar.

If all you have available at home is a dreadnaught (bluegrass-style) guitar and your child’s hands are small, she’ll manage somehow. But until her body grows, she won’t be able to enjoy much precision since a child can have difficulty just holding a full-size guitar in her lap. A small body guitar is a much better idea for small arms if you can afford one. If you take care of it, you can sell it or give it to another family member when your daughter grows into your full-size guitar.

Emotional Maturity

Your daughter could be any age at all and have the emotional maturity to be able to comprehend music at its basic level. The kind of maturity I’m talking about is the ability to commit to something that does not turn out immediate results.

At some point every little child learns to connect the dots between music and their bodies through dancing. But many make the mistake of thinking that playing an instrument is just as simple. We won’t know if your daughter can “visualize” music until after she takes a few lessons. Some are not ready yet. These kids quickly lose interest in practicing and/or going to lessons. Keep your eyes open for signs your daughter has abandoned interest. She may not be quite prepared to dive fully in. Please don’t force her.

The Ability — and Freedom — to Concentrate

As you might have guessed, music training takes intense concentration. Your daughter is faced with learning to pay deep attention to a kaleidoscope of serious information. Some kids will be exhilarated by it and others will be put off by the huge volume of information that lies ahead. But over time your daughter can train her hands to remember movements, train her ear to remember pitch, train her memory to call up the melodies and lyrics, and will successfully learn how to juggle many tasks going on all at once in her brain. It’s very good for her thought process in general.

She’ll learn about music in tiny bits and pieces. Her ability to concentrate will help her put the puzzle together on the fly. Her musical intuition will be solid as rock if she learns how to slip in and out of concentration — and has your permission and support as she learns to do this.

If you are personally sitting in on your daughter’s study time — which is a great idea for the first months or so — she will be spending an enormous amount of effort getting it right for you, to show you can she do it. She is going to seek your approval at every level of improvement. I hope you will give it to her. Then, if you will give her permission (and space) to disconnect from your approval, it could encourage her to seek that place inside all of us where a deeper, more personal kind of learning takes place.

How do you give your daughter permission to concentrate? Tell her, “You’re doing really well. I’m going to leave you by yourself for a little while so you can practice on your own for a few minutes. I won’t be far if you need some help.” Then leave her side and let her have at it for five or ten minutes.

When she’s finished practicing, give her lots of positive messages. Even if her music sounds like chaos to you, it’s still your daughter’s first attempts at making music and therefore a worthwhile and valuable personal expression. If she never becomes a musician, learning to contemplate new ideas is an important kind of maturity to cultivate in any child. It’s a good sign that she wants to tackle something as grown up as learning to play the guitar.

Patience and Flexibility

No mystery about it, learning your first musical instrument takes a while. The first 6-8 weeks of practice will toughen the fingers, build strength in the hands, and teach your child to manage several priorities at once.

To make it through this ordeal of sore fingers and frustration, she will need to develop patience. Guess where’s she’s going to learn this part? Since you are your daughter’s primary role model, I ask you to make every effort to be consistently patient with your child as she struggles to grow musically. This is the best way for her to learn to be patient with herself.

If she complains about practicing or about how long it is taking, agree with her that it’s been tough; then tell her how much you admire her determination and how proud you are that she took on such a big challenge on her own. Acknowledge how hard she’s been working, then gently help her see how far she’s actually come toward her goal of learning to play. She wouldn’t want to quit when she’s so close to meeting that goal.

Both you and your daughter will experience periods of frustration with music and with each other. Remember: like patience, flexibility is critical. My words of wisdom to both of you: it IS okay to blow off practice simply because it’s not a good day for it for one of you. Teach your daughter to be flexible by being flexible yourself. Allow her to “make up” any practices she misses — or not — allow her to choose, if at all possible. Music requires a great deal of flexibility as it is never played exactly the same way twice, nor does a song sound the same from person to person.

At the very beginning, the lessons might be very confusing to your child — and will probably be to you, too — but over the weeks, I’ll give your daughter tips on how to both practice and explore effectively. For awhile, however, she’s going to be “noodling” all over the guitar neck and it will not make a lot of musical sense. Hang in there.

Try to keep a smile on your face even when you want to smash her guitar against the wall. Slip in those earplugs if you need to. Prepare for it: it’s gonna get pretty unlikable from time to time. Sometimes it will be laughable, but other times like fingernails on a blackboard. However, if you can be patient and flexible most of the time, so will your daughter learn to be.

Practice Time

The entire week’s practice time should be scheduled at the beginning of the week and rewarded when all sessions have taken place. Allow 30 minutes to go over her lessons and play what she’s been learning. Please allow your daughter’s practice time to be important enough to appear on your own personal calendar — make sure that you won’t forget that she needs structured time for it. Give her the option of deciding when she wants to practice. Then hold her to the schedule she chooses.

Practice Space

Your daughter can practice anywhere she’s comfortable, but a quiet place will make concentration easier for her. Good lighting is very important. It will help if she can practice in front of a music stand; a stand will help your daughter maintain a better seated posture as she learns. A fancy stand is not necessary, but a fold-up cheap one is often too flimsy to be practical. A makeshift stand made from a cardboard box will do nicely; anything that tilts her notebook up will do. Just make sure it is at sight level when she is bent over the guitar — she will want to be able to look from the music to the guitar neck and back again without undue head movement. Make sure she practices in an armless straight-backed chair that allows her to plant her toes or feet solidly on the ground. Some kids like to use a small stool to support their right foot.

A Practice Method

So, how does one practice music? Repetition is where you start. Repetition is said to create “muscle memory” — that is, our hands remember where to go in a semi-conscious manner. Similar to memorization, repetition builds endurance and understanding.

Your daughter should repeat a homework exercise for 3-5 minutes. If her homework sheet says, “Practice moving from X chord shape to Y chord shape,” that means your daughter should make those hand positions over and over again, trying to get a smoother and smoother movement of her hand. She should stop and shake out her hands after a few tries, then repeat the exercise again. Repeat whatever exercise is presented for 3-5 minutes, even if it seems ridiculously easy. She can get very bored, but building strength is the only way she’ll be able to play — kiss her fingertips and help her laugh it off if she complains. Don’t let her use hard work as an excuse not to practice. It gets easier quickly.

Her learning posture will include rounding her back. Don’t ask her to sit with her back straight while she’s learning. She will have to lean over the guitar to see and hear what’s she’s doing. Do not let her practice with the guitar flat on her lap. The guitar should be perpendicular to the floor, resting on your daughter’s right thigh. Your daughter should be bent over it so she can move her left elbow freely to the side of and under the neck.

What seems easy today won’t be remembered in three weeks unless it’s embedded in the muscle memory. As your daughter progresses with lessons, she will continually be expanding her muscle memory.

Below is a simple outline for a practice session:

• Wash the hands to keep the strings clean.
• Begin practice with gentle HAND and FINGER STRETCHES.
• Move next to TUNING THE GUITAR.
• READ the homework assignment, all exercises.
• Shake out and re-stretch the hands from time to time. Play and sing the little songs in the lesson.
• Finish with the exercises in the WORKBOOK.
• Repeat one exercise 3 to 5 times. It will be very monotonous, but each time will get easier
• At the end of twenty minutes, EXPLORE.
• At the end of thirty minutes, wipe the strings and return the guitar to its case

It’s quite okay to allow your daughter to do things “wrong” — in fact, if she does something incorrectly, remain silent. Allow her several attempts to figure out the correct way on her own, using her memory and logic before you step in with suggestions. You don’t need to correct her unless she looks to you for help. Please do not hurry her in any way. Reassure her if necessary that she’s doing fine.

In the early stage of development, it’s much more important that your daughter explores her guitar and its sound than for her to do things perfectly. Experimentation will help her gain familiarity with the guitar and music in general. Your comfort level with this is very important. She will not do things perfectly for a long, long time. Do everything you can to help her feel okay with progress and not worry about perfection. Keep your expectations low and hers high.

Allow me to assure you that precision and smoothness will come later in the learning curve. But for now, practice is a time for memorization and exploration. It’s a time for letting go and experiencing the world of music. Keep some earplugs handy.

Exploration Time

Your daughter will greatly benefit from a little uninterrupted time with her instrument for exploration and experimentation beyond her scheduled practice time.

You can add 10 minutes onto the end of her regular practice time if she’s not tired of playing at the moment. Or, she can just sit down with the guitar when it’s convenient. You don’t need to supervise (she’ll probably be able to concentrate better if she’s alone), but do try to pay attention to how long she’s at it. You may have to limit experimentation time so her fingers don’t get too sore. Anytime she’s in the mood is a good time for exploration.

However, exploration is NOT the same as practice. So you may have to supervise this just a bit to make sure she’s going through her lessons.

Commitment from a Caregiver: Yes, This Means You

As much as we all are attracted to music, it can take years to learn how to play an instrument fluently, old or young. Some “get it” right off the bat and can find their way by ear and imitation. They spend hours holding their guitars, exploring and experimenting. Others take to it in a slower, more methodical way; they might keep to a schedule and study in depth whatever lesson is presented to them. Regardless of your child’s learning style, she can learn how to play an instrument IF she can sustain her interest throughout the learning process.

It is normal for a child’s interest to fluctuate. I don’t care how much she loves music and the idea of playing an instrument, she will grow weary of the long learning curve from time to time. She may even get bored because of the mundane nature of learning in tiny increments. If she feels too much pressure, she might cast it aside as too much work. Seasonal activities can also distract a child. You can help keep your daughter engaged in the exploring/learning process by returning her attention to it often using praise, and helping her set and maintain a realistic practice schedule.

You are an exceptional parent for respectfully listening to your daughter and responding positively when she expressed her desire to learn to play the guitar. She’s going to look to you for the ongoing support and encouragement she’ll need to succeed. It could require your personal involvement for several years – not as a coach but as her cheerleader.

Just keep reminding yourself that your commitment is to letting her learn, not making her learn. Her love of music, coupled with your love of her, will carry your daughter the rest of the way.

If you are interested in lessons for your daughter, please email me at susieco@comcast.net or call 615-662-5577.