Becoming like My Mom

When I was growing up, there was just one thing I wanted to achieve in life: To be completely unlike my mother.

Well, that boat had already sailed. I am becoming more and more like my mother.

In a lot of ways, we are very different. I follow recipes to the 1/4 teaspoon, at least the first time, before I make changes to adjust the caloric consumptions for this household. She never follows recipes. Ever. I make my kids go to bed, that sleep is one of the best gift I can give them. My mother firmly believes that children spend entirely too much time sleeping. I love to kiss my kids. My mother really only likes to kiss my Dad. I wait forever to buy plane tickets. She buys them as soon as possible. I have an obsession about my triceps, she does not care about her triceps at all. I warm up to people only if I like them. She is warm to everyone.

We, however, both yell very much the same way. "Are you listening? Just how many times do I need to say this?" Of course, she primarily yelled at her kids in Mandarin, which was one of the reasons that I didn't end up speaking Mandarin to A&Z more: I sounded just like her and it was spooky.

As the kids are getting older, I am turning into her.

Case and point. Piano lessons.

We embarked on our piano experience this weekend, as much as I told her that I was going to start these lessons in October of Never. Apparently, October of Never did arrive.

After much consideration, as a family, we decided that I would start them. I had contacted a teacher close by, but her studio was pretty full. I thought about hiring grad students from local places of higher education to teach them, but no takers either. A&Z also opted to have me teach them, instead of sitting in the car and waiting for the other sib to finish. Moreover, Aidan opted to save the money in tuition and spend that money on ice hockey lessons instead. (That, my readers, I will never be able to teach.)

The only advice my mother had for me were two points:
1. Be sure you teach them music theory from the very beginning.
2. Be sure you encourage them, "I wish I encouraged you more."

After browsing through my mother's entire piano studio repertoire- she mailed all of her books to me when she retired- I decided to start the kids using different materials. Mainly to ease sibling rivalry- as a middle child, I spend a lot of time thinking about sibling rivalry, which says more about me than my kids.

Also, Aidan is an excellent reader and I want to encourage that. Whereas, Zoe, after all, is three and is just more inspired by pretty pictures. Aidan is doing the Suzuki method, and Zoe is starting with the Sebastian series.

Here is the interesting thing: The books approach 'teaching piano' very, very, differently.

With Suzuki, the whole idea is to listen, imitate, and play. By the end of book 1, a child can play a whole lot of music using both hands. It assumes that a child can read music (?!) when starting the series. I find that kinda incredulous. Criticism of this method is that children sometimes end up not being very able music readers, because they rely on their ears too much. (Don't worry, I will be sure that won't happen, especially because I don't actually think Aidan is a particularly aural kid.)

In the Sebastian book, it is very much "here are the black keys, let's play them for a while."

Both kids are doing great with their own books. With Aidan, I am supplementing quite a bit to get him to read music, and he is catching on quickly. I am also trying to teach them in the way I learned music: If you hear this pitch, this is where it is on paper. We will have to see how it goes.

It is also becoming very clear that I need to sit with them to do this for a while- we don't expect children to read on their own in infancy, so I can't expect them to practice on their own in their infancy of learning piano either. That, is going to be a huge time suck, I mean, commitment.

But I am excited. Ideally, I would love to have a quintet, to play Schubert's "The Trout." But that would require me to have two more kids. And that, is definitely going to be a time 'commitment' I just can't make.