First things first, let's get one thing straight, guitar lessons for children as such, don't really exist separately. Music is music, it doesn't matter if it's an adult playing it or a child, the rules are all comparable . In this entry, I will provide the justification for the aforementioned statements. When contemplating guitar lessons for children, I think we can all agree that kids for many reasons are not the same as gownups. I didn't think of it until I was a grownup, but there were at least two main hurdles holding me up from learning the guitar, they were: 1. Small Hands
2. Short Attention Span
Small Hands
You already know this, but every part of a child's body is smaller than a grownup's I remember when I was a child, I thought my parents were giants. Especially my father. He's all of 5'8", but I remember looking at his shoes in his closet thinking, "I'll never be that gigantic". I was in Sunday school one day and volunteered to learn a guitar tune for our program. To my utter disappointment, my hands just weren't big enough to play the thing.
Child's Guitars
Back when I first picked up a guitar, I had no idea that the people that make guitars also manufacture them for little people too (I hope that was politically correct). If one of your children is making noise about playing guitar so that you have a feeling that you will soon be in the market for guitar lessons for children, begin your research of the whole learn guitar thing by first checking on the availability of child sized guitars. Your child will thank you!
New Child's Guitars
If you buy a new child's guitar you will probably pay an arm and a leg. One way to shop that a lot of people don't consider is the local pawn shop. The hitch is that stock can vary from day to day, but if they have what you're looking for, the deals can be fantastic One advantage of getting a used guitar is that you're not taking a big hit on depreciation like the first owner did.
Inexpensive Guitars
Let me be clear about this, get a used guitar that was expensive when it was new. Relatively inexpensive guitars are fairly plentiful and easy to find. Try to resist the urge to pick one up. That great "deal" probably convinced some other child that he didn't like guitar. I have never seen a garage sale or flea market guitar that wasn't hard to play. Try to find a quality used guitar.
Short Attention Span
Before buying guitar lessons for children, the other important thing to think about is that children almost always have a short attention span. When I was a kid. I guess it's only natural that I didn't think I had a short attention span, but I do remember when one of my teenage sons took the lawnmower apart so he could rebuild it, only he never put it back together because he went on to another project. I just took it for granted that once a project got started, it probably wouldn't get finished.
Distractions
When all four of my children expressed a desire to play guitar, my first thought was, "here we go again". It seems that most boys want to learn guitar about the same time that they discover girls. In my boy's case, the girls won. Then, to my surprise, one of my boys started playing guitar when he was a senior in secondary school. He didn't want to take lessons though. He said his friends would teach him. It was a social thing I guess.
"Wow", I thought, that's a very adult type commitment and ten years later he still plays.
You have the guitar, you have your kids short attention span in mind, you just need the guitar lessons for children. When shopping for lessons, the short attention span is very important to keep in mind.
The Actual Lessons
In the old days, (I consider anything before the internet to be the old days) you had to either join the school band or talk your parents into getting a private music instructor for you. Now with the World Wide Web, there is an alternative. With the World Wide Web you can find lessons for pretty much any type of music that you want. While on the Web, you'll find that the lessons are either on membership type sites where you pay every month just like an instructor was working with or you can pay one time.
The Best Choice
When you think about the short attention span, paying a one time fee for your guitar lessons for children sounds like the way to go. Your kid will probably start his lessons with a schedule like one video lesson every week or month or whatever. Then out of the blue, he or she may want to take a break for awhile so they can do something else. In my house, all four kids said that they wanted to play guitar. One actually played for awhile, then he quit, but started up again a few years later and still plays. That's the way it is with short attention spans.''Taking a break" doesn't work out well for an instructor . A personal instructor would most likely try to talk your child into keeping the guitar lessons for children continuing. Having an instructor isn't the only situation where it may be hard to do something else. If your child belonged to a membership site, you would still be paying even during a short break.
What Have We Learned?
If your kids express an interest in playing, you can insure their success by buying the right guitar lessons for children. Take a child's size and mental differences into account before making any decisions. Taking the short attention span into account, when you shop for guitar lessons for children, I would recommend a fixed price group of lessons.

0 comments:
Post a Comment