Lydia and I just finished our first real music lesson. Up until now, we have had fun sessions at the piano where we sing, play, talk about high and low, soft and loud, etc., but today was the first day I actually made her do something hard that she did not want to do. And I feel very ambivalent about how it went down.
I sat her down at the piano today and said, “Lydia, we’re going to tap some rhythms, okay?” She was compliant at first, but then I tapped a rhythm that was not just quarter notes. I tapped: quarter note–8th note, 8th note–quarter note. (One, Two-and Three.) Not hard, right?
Lydia tried about three times before giving up. Since I had literally ALL the time in the world, I decided that we would not do anything until she got it right. For the next hour and a half, she screamed, rolled on the floor, pushed furniture, and pounded things while I clapped and tapped out that rhythm on everything in sight. Mary, on the other hand, tried the ENTIRE time to tap the rhythm. Any time I tried a new surface, Mary crawled to it and tapped or clapped her own version of the rhythm. Each time this happened, I ecstatically praised Mary until Lydia competitively banged out her own attempt. Suuuuch bad parenting, I know.
About half an hour into the fiasco, Lydia did manage to pound something on the table that sounded like the rhythm, but the two middle notes were uneven and unconvincing, so I made a split second decision and told her she was really, really close, but that she could do even better. If I sound like a Nazi, I promise, I did not yell at Lydia or say demeaning things to her. (My dad did that a lot during piano practice, so I hope I know what lines never to cross.) All I did was encourage, hug, praise, kiss and cuddle Lydia, but I did resolve that we would not end the session until she got it right.
Finally, after an hour and a half, I grabbed Lydia’s hands (I had tried multiple times to do this earlier, but she resisted) and clapped the rhythm with her hands for her. It was getting close to nap time and the girls needed food session #4 of the day (Abe eats every two hours as a grown adult male, and the girls seem to have his metabolism, so they eat frequently), and I was starting to question the wisdom of my resolve. So I helped Lydia do it right and then called it good.
Now I’m all in a tizzy about whether this session was a good or bad thing. I think I am leaning toward “bad” because two is a little young to start this type of music training. Maybe until age four or five it should just be all fun and games, and no real demands should be placed on the child. But then part of me thinks that if Lydia is going to master the piano, she needs to put in 10,000 hours, and the sooner she starts, the better.
We then trekked downstairs to decompress with the banana swirl “ice cream” Lydia had started making before our rhythm debacle. She peeled and broke the bananas into small pieces, I froze them, and then after our session, I put them in the food processor and pushed “on.” That’s all there is to it, and the ice cream was amazing. Daniel Tiger makes this ice cream on his show and it looked easy, so I thought, why not? After their snack, I cleaned up the kitchen as fast as I could (not fast enough for Mary, who was screaming by the time I finished) and shuttled the girls to bed.
It could have been such a happy day if I had not done that rhythmic exercise with Lydia. Here are snapshots from the morning:
