The Joys & Jostling of Raising Musically-Inclined Kids

Rainy Recital Day 2011

In our family, piano-practicing has always been a "challenge"  (euphemism). Caleb would call it torture . And declaration of war begins when the words, "Give me a time! What time are you going to practice?" shoot out of my mouth. It seems that every mom struggles with the same exact predicament in the afternoons, after the kids had come home from school, had their snack and watched reruns of Arthur yet another time.

Caleb plays our new piano for the 1st time!

I'm not sure how Caleb pulled it off this time, and the minimal time he puts into piano playing (~8 minutes a day) perplexes me. The piano teacher always says that he 'did good', and I wonder how that could happen? During recital morning, Caleb still played super-off -key, hard-on-the-eardrum, and honestly unbearable melodies which he is to present to the world 5 hours later! Daddy and I both fear that the teacher will soon fire him as her student for decimating her good reputation as one of the best teachers in our area.



Surprisingly, we were able to hear Caleb play the WHOLE song, without mistakes on every other note, from beginning to end, for the 1st time in his recital yesterday! This is probably our last time too, as it would be uncharacteristic for him to reiterate his 'old' songs after the Big R Day has ended. Good thing we have this video to look back on when we are old and gray (if blogspot doesn't fold).



Speaking of music, he also started learning Clarinet in his band class this year! I bought a super good deal neon green clarinet on Amazon.com that turned out to be a total dud. I couldn't even put the clarinet parts together, and when I did (an hour later), I discovered I bruised my right thumb doing so too! Caleb was bummed and feared lagging behind (since we are returning our dud), so he sadly decided to default to choir instead. However, our wonderful band teacher encouraged us by lending us his last 'district clarinet', and Caleb was able to catch up right away and enjoyed playing clarinet!



He plays at home (without my nagging)  'just for fun' and learned songs that were not even taught yet! As he grows up, I pray he will take this talent with him when he ventures into adulthood, and use it for enjoyment as well as an offering to our Lord!