musical instruments | ADHD Information

musicfanatic- I am going to go with your suggestion about not hounding him to practice so much. He is talented and gifted by his own right and I am not going to make him hate it!

Yeah... when I was a kid I was undiagnosed with ADHD.  I learned to play the piano when I was little and french horn when in middle/high school.  My parents had a rule you had to practice for this amount of time this many times a week.  Also, a motivator for me for piano was that my lesson instructor would give me a rating 1-5 of how well I was able to play the peice of music and if I didnt get a high enough school I had to come back next week until I had learned it well enough to move on.

For middle school we had practice charts.  We had to practice x amount of time over y days and have our parents sign it and if we didn't then it would hurt our grades.  That was a pretty decent motivator for me. 

For high school I was in one of the top bands, there was a certain level of competition that movitated me to practice and do well, not to mention grades.

College hit... I quit playing piano and french horn, and pretty much any music all together for about 2-3 years.  Finally, I decided I wanted to teach myself how to play the guitar.  I had been writing lyrics to songs over the past couple years and I wanted to learn how to play because I thought it would be fun and because I wanted to write my own songs.

It was a very slow process in the begining... My musical background helped in teaching myself but it took about a year before I really became good enough go from practicing not being fun to being able to look up tabs online and play songs, sing along, and most importantly, write my own music!!!!  It took a long time of scattered practice but I'm finally to the point of being able to play well and write my own songs and its very rewarding. 

What I learned was you can try to force your kid to learn music like my parents did (don't get me wrong, I enjoyed piano and french horn, but without their drive it wouldn't have happened).  The best motivator for practice though is the enjoyment you personally get from learning how to play a song, or writing your own music and hearing it come to life.  If he doesn't truely enjoy music then you can lead him to water and try to make him drink, but the results might be lackluster.

Thats my story on it, hopefully you'll be able to get some insight out of it. -Court

I was kinda the same way with piano when I was a kid. Many times I
would only practice before my lesson even though I loved to play piano.
My teacher always said I had natural talent and I still learned to play well.
I would suggest not making him practice. My parents never made me
practice once and as I got older I started practicing more. A lot of times
with younger kids, if you force them to practice it will make them not like
playing the instrument anymore. Music is suposed to be a good outlet,
fun and relaxing. One thing that might help is if you get him music he
would be interested in. I used to love to practice from my star wars and
harry potter books when I was younger. If you go to a music
store(especially a bigger one) and tell them your sons age and skill level
they could probably find you some fun books that he may really enjoy
playing. Also giving a reward for practicing might be nice. Also when I
was younger I saw a really good pianist and that motivated me to practice
more. Maybe if you could take him to a concert with a clarinetist or see if
you can get a good clarinet player to come talk to him and play for him,
he may want to practice more. You could also give him a choice
sometimes like, maybe if he is suposed to be working on homework you
could say, "if you want you can practice clarinet instead". I used to
practice piano a lot to procrastinate homework. Not that he should never
do his homework, but he may like that as a little break every once in a
while. any tips for getting them to practice?

DS (10, adhd) really wanted to play the clarinet when instrumental music started in school this past fall.  He still seems to like it, but has no interest in practicing- also practicing once his meds have worn off is pretty much useless, so that narrows down possible times to work it into the schedule.

I wouldn't make an issue of it except that his teacher has told me and DH on several occasions that he has a real natural talent.  Right now he's keeping pace with the other kids while only practicing 2 or 3 times a month.  I know that if he were to practice several times a week that he would be really good.  

I don't want to just not worry about it because I see a great opportunity for him to get that sense of accomplishment that can be so rare for our kids.

Any tips/suggestions for a parent burned out on how to motivate?

Can you offer him a reward for practicing.

How often would you like him to practice?

My son is very gifted with the guitar but HATES to practice. His teacher says he is doing great. He is even writing his own lyrics and music.at 10! the deal on getting the guitar was he had to practice 1/2 hour a nite (off meds). He does it most of the time. We take his gaming time away until he practices .spamula- No video games until after he practices will probably work- at least until the weather warms up and playing outside starts to rival video games in the fun department.     

KJ- rewards are the obvious answer- the problem there is that he already gets rewards for making it through the morning routine with only a few reminders (per task) and also for homework completion.  Past experience has taught me that if he gets rewards for too many things, the effectiveness of the reward system decreases.  He's actually told me that he doesn't care if he gets "x", because he's already getting "y" for doing well in another area. 
 
We need an emoticon that's tearing it's hair out.  
For my daughter, we don't use a reward exactly, but I tell her she needs to practice her music BEFORE she does whatever else it is that she wants to do, such as watch TV, go to the park, call a friend, whatever it is... She doesn't practice a lot, but doing a little each day makes a big difference.
It might be helpful to tell him to practice his songs, or whatever it is he's doing, a certain number of times, rather than put a time limit on it. If music comes easily for your son, he probably doesn't need to practice for long, and keeping it short will make it less of a chore. Also, once he starts, he may be enjoying it and want to continue!
I also remind my daughter that she has talent and it's important to nurture and build on the gifts that she has.

Those are rewards too, right?

Our behavioralist says this: "If it's not food, shelter, love and affection, then it's a previledge, aka a reward."

We are using the chip system so that he pretty much gets nothing unless he buys it.  Even his pickiness (as in his food prefesences) he has to pay for. And he gets penalized for wasting food (sorta).  I wouldn't say that it's a breeze or everything is all perfect...he finds ways around things still.  And when he really doesn't want to do stuff, he will openly forgo his reward...so it's not perfect.  But things are getting done moreso than before we adopted the behavioralist perspective on 'rewards.'

Our son had already demonstrated an ability to work previous reward systems in such a way that we were shelling out cash hand over fist & he was getting gifts WAY too often...so when we set this one up, we did so such that it rarely costs a dime. Big rewards do, like outings & such...but those he needs to save up for, big time! Meantime if he wants to be picky or watch TV he using his chips for those, ya know.

But certainly using TV or the computer, or anything else (for us the big thing is 1-on-1 time) as a reward verus money, treats or toys...makes things easier to use...like you don't feel like you're buying compliance.

*KJ*39856.3073726852Yeah... now that I think about it I'd say something along similar lines.  ADD'ers tend to thrive in structured environments, as long as they aren't opposed to the structure.  Your child may need a certain amount of encouragement and or incentive to practice so you should keep that in mind.  Just make sure not to push him to the point where he doesn't want to continue learning music or you are defeating the purpose of teaching him.I agree; I think it's a balancing act. You have to figure out when and how much to push and when to back off. My daughter loves music, but if left to her own devices she could easily spend all day in front of the TV or computer.
I try to remind her of her love for music and coax her into spending time on it and to find music that she's excited about learning.
Her voice teacher requires her to practice 10 minutes a day, so I makes sure she does that. Sometimes she sings all the time, but not necessarily the songs her voice teacher wants her to practice. Her guitar/piano teacher is very laid back, and when she's very busy with school and homework I only insist that she practice on the weekend.
Recently she found some music she's excited about playing on guitar and began showing a little more self-motivation, so I hope that continues.
My son has always been self-motivated with music practice, although he's gone through phases where he's more or less into it.

My 6 yr old wanted a guitar for Christmas, got one, had a month of lessons, then his behavior became horrible, and the psychologist said that his guitar lessons are also a privilege, and need to be taken away until the behavior gets back on track. 

He wanted the guitar, he wanted to learn to play it, but he didn't want to practice or pay much attention at lessons.  Maybe once his behavior is back on track we will try again.

< =text/>_popupControl(); I think that kids learn musical intruments best with a bit of modified Suzuki method, just the part where the parents have to learn at the same time.  Three times a week, I sit with my son and we both practice his drum lesson.  The other two days, he goes it alone. He gets two days a week off. He tried to whine about practicing once, but I told him what it costs us to rent his drum per day and that if he wanted to skip, he'd lose that much in allowance because it was like wasting money. He has to practice each song at least once (there are usually two), so if he does it with a good heart and gets at it, he's done in less than 10 minutes. That's not too much to ask each day when he wants to spend hours on electronics.I was the same way when I started playing 20 years ago. I do well during the lesson's but got bored when I practiced.

I got really into it when I found guitar mags with tab music in it to every popular hard rock song from the 80's.

My parents told me that if I would learn at least one song from the guitar mags, learn how to read the tab music and what each line, symble, and number meant in the tabulature, they would buy my picks and stings for my guitar. No song learned, no picks or strings.

I still have all those mags here and still read them.

My parents thought this was a better trade off than paying for the lessons. But now I regret not continuing  with the lessons and practicing more.

Now I spend around 2 hours a day working on the instrument.

I think my son is just a little too young right now.....   maybe if he didn't have some of his other issues going on it would be different, but I think we're putting the guitar lessons on hold for a bit.  He is only 6, so we will try again in the future.

Right now we have to get him on the right meds, and getting the right kind of treatment for whatever he's got!  He's definitely got something or some things going on that we need to get control of!