Help a Child That Refuses to Practice - Without Nagging

0:01 happy birthday [Music] listen my name is Koo sat Perry I'm one of the hand inand instructors who wrote anecdotes of how we used Parenting by Connection in our lives and the approach is written in this wonderful book called listen five simple tools to meet your everyday parenting challenges by two amazing authors P Patty wiffler and to

0:31 sure so before I read my anecdote I just want to say that I am a parent of two children who are now in high school and middle school and I'm also a social emotional learning specialist to kindergarteners through second graders in an independent uh Elementary School in Northern California and I am far from being a perfect parent and uh one of the things that I really struggled with was limit

1:05 setting um using Parenting by connection really changed the way I think about myself As a caretaker and children's off track Behavior I struggled with my emotions and my children's emotions and how I just react and forget about all the things I'm supposed to know no so little by little I built my stamina and started

1:37 feeling like yes I am limit setting more respectfully more meaningfully kindly and sometimes I should say more firmly than my predecessors and I'm very proud of my sons in high school and middle school they have preserved a keen sense of

2:07 curiosity love of learning and I can see that they go after their passion which I am just um happy about so since this anecdote um my son has switched his activity from piano to something else but I think the point is that I just want to see young

2:40 people do what they do out of passion and out of their internal motivation and this is um I I was really thankful that I was able to do this even though it's a small victory to me it was a big one so here it is my 9-year-old son takes piano lessons and used to be happy to play for his friends however for the last half year

3:11 he disliked practicing at home and he wasn't making much progress one day my son's piano teacher noted us to work on practicing more at home on our way home from the lesson I started lecturing my son he went quiet Qui it and clearly felt ashamed I caught myself it felt wrong to lecture like this it took a lot to bite my tongue but I apologized and shut my

3:42 mouth until we got home which allowed me to regain relative calm at home I asked my son if it was okay for us to piano lessons he reluctantly agreed this time I tried my best to keep from saying if you can't practice you should stop taking lessons which was what my mom would say to me when I was small I sat down next to him looked him

4:16 in the eye and asked as calmly as I could what I could do to help him practice every day my son started complaining about how his younger brother was bothering him or how it was unfair that his brother could play while he had to practice I listened and resisted the urge to say something like that's not true I asked him gently again what help do you need I'm sure you can do it this made my son really upset and he answered

4:49 you can just shut up and be quiet go away I responded I really want to figure out a way to help you practice I'm sure you in practice I held my ground but at the same time kept wondering if I was still motivated my by my upset or was now offering him a real support at last I chose an attitude of listening and giving confidence to him rather than lecturing and expecting him to change I

5:21 thought he knows what he's supposed to do and actually likes to do but he just can't for some reason my son was soon crying he cried hard saying it was unfair and all my fault I kept on stay listening he cried sitting down next to the piano keyboard with me at his side after about 15 minutes I needed to take care of other

5:52 things and he wasn't crying hard anymore so I told him I was going to have to move on and got up to my surprise he started practicing piano on his own soon after I left his side I couldn't believe it since that evening he has practiced piano almost every day sometimes starting on his own other times with my encouragement which had never worked

6:23 before piano practice did not feel like a dreaded chore anymore something was lighter I could tell that my son was playing because he liked it and he wanted to seeing this changed the way I think about music too I stopped saying it's time to practice your piano and started saying I want to hear your music can you

6:56 play I can see that I was able to help him to work through whatever was in the way of him enjoying music practice thank you so much for watching and happy birthday again