Practice What You Preach

Be who you tell your kids to be

When I was a kid, playing piano was a huge part of my life. I started taking lessons when I was four and fell in love with it immediately. I loved just sitting at the piano and relaxing, messing around with pieces I either knew well or had absolutely no intention of mastering. But I was also the rare freak kid who actually enjoyed practicing, playing the same four measures over and over until I finally got it right.

In high school and college, piano took up a ton of my time. I became the rehearsal pianist and sometimes musical director for various school choruses and ensembles. As a truly terrible athlete, it was my nerdy equivalent of a varsity sport. Also, I've always loved musical theater, but my lack of talent and terrible stage fright meant that performing wasn't for me. So the behind-the-scenes role of rehearsal pianist provided me the perfect way to be in the thick of it all. And if you think that as a supporting player I didn't get to share in the glory, then you've clearly never been to a sitzprobe, when performers rehearse for the first time with the full orchestra. The sitzprobe is one of the most exciting days in the life of any production. Everything suddenly sounds so good and feels so real, and that was my time to shine. As the link between the stage and the pit, I was the sitzprobe hero and got to enjoy my moment in the spotlight.

Realistically, I was never going to pursue a career in music—I frankly wasn't talented enough, and I wanted more stability and less competition in my chosen field. So I went to grad school for psychology instead. In an ideal world, I would have loved to bridge music and special education in my work, but the real world didn't present many opportunities for that kind of thing.

Slowly but surely, playing piano receded into the background of my life. I kept a keyboard in my apartment and played when I could, but New York City apartments aren't exactly the best places to bang away on musical instruments. Plus, my time became increasingly limited, first with grad school, then with work, and finally with my kids.

But then my daughter Eleanor was old enough to begin taking piano lessons, and I was so excited to sign her up. Truthfully, I wasn't exactly sure how it would go; Eleanor loved music and thrived on one-on-one attention from teachers, but she wasn't what you'd call a "still" person. I had my doubts about how she'd handle practicing.

My suspicions were confirmed: Eleanor loved her lessons and making sounds on the piano, but practicing was rough. She'd get incredibly annoyed and fight with me whenever I announced it was practice time. I'd tell her how fun playing piano was, how important it was to work through frustration, and how satisfying it feels to finally nail a piece. But I don’t think she believed a single word I said. Nevertheless, she stuck with it. (Granted, I didn't exactly give her another option, but she didn't seem to mind; she was happy to go to lessons even though practicing remained a struggle.)

The following year, my family moved apartments, and we finally had space for a real upright piano. With this beautiful instrument right in my living room, I felt inspired to start playing again. When it was time to sign Eleanor up for lessons, I signed myself up, too.

On Monday afternoons at three, she went to her practice room at the Y, and I went to mine. We met with our respective teachers for half an hour each. And then when it was time for her to practice at home, it was also time for me to practice. All of a sudden, we were competing for time on the piano. The moment I wanted to review my pieces, she wanted to review hers. She still got frustrated occasionally, but she no longer resisted playing like she had before.

Which, when you think about it, makes perfect sense. Why would she believe that practicing is important, fun, valuable, and all those wonderful things I claimed when I wasn't doing it myself?

And then it occurred to me that we ask kids to do stuff like this all the time. We tell them to join clubs (while we don't join any clubs ourselves). We tell them to exercise (while we don't exercise). We tell them to read for fun (while we don't read for fun). We tell them to do volunteer work (while we don't do volunteer work).

So I guess the moral of this story is that we should try to be the people we tell our kids to be. We should model the behavior we want to see in them. And while you're busy being a good role model, you might just fall in love with something new—or something old—all over again.

***

Mazel tov to my favorite new musical on all the Tony noms, but Helen J. Shen was robbed!