Developmental Stages in Music Education: Preteens to Highschool

Birth to 18 Months [1] > Toddler to Preschooler [1] > Elementary School [2]> Middle School to Highschool

As children approach their teens and begin to define themselves as separate from their parents, expect some rebellion on the music front. Their taste in music is still forming, but peer pressure will often influence their taste to consumption of some rather banal pop for a few years. If you've given them broad exposure to lot of different music, hopefully this phase will be short lived as they will have fairly sophisticated taste lurking in there somewhere! Expect some rebellion and bouts of rejection around practicing their instrument as well. It is critical that you hold firm on practice requirements, unless your child truly hates the instrument they have been playing. It is important that children learn patience, perseverance and understand how much of competence comes from sheer practice as oppose to inborn-talent.

• Puberty is a rough patch on all fronts, but it particularly affects the voice. Deepening is to be expected for both boys and girls.
• Get your child involved in group music experiences: choir, marching bands or their own band.
• Fantasies of becoming a professional musician will emerge in many children. Be sure to explore with your child the difference between the supposed benefits of fame and the amount of work that is involved in becoming a professional musician. Encourage their career ambitions, but temper any star-seeking with solid facts around their favorite band’s work ethic and personal hard road to success.

Unless your child is planning on a career as a professional musician, you might be facing the prospect of an abandoned instrument in the short-term for kids heading off to college. Some suggestions:

• Encourage your child to take a class or two in music, even if it is not their major at college.
• Suggest your child to take their instrument with them to college.
• Suggest joining a band, or regular jam sessions, as a way to meet new people and expand their social life.
• Just bring the instrument as dorm-room decoration and hope they play!

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