Sports and music lessons

I know its different for every family, but I'm curious. Do you think
it is reasonable for a kid to commit to both a sport *and* learning a
musical instrument? I never did any competitive sports while growing

Ericka Kammerer...

dragonlady...

The short answer is "yes" -- in fact, I think it's a good thing, at

Cathy Kearns...

At 5 my kids did lots of activities, but didn't take up musical instruments
until 4th grade. I noticed they started loving lots of different things,
but as they got older they tended to focus more on one thing. At age 12 my
older daughter had given up trumpet, and all sports, and just did dance, six
days a week. At age 12 my younger daughter is still playing viola, takes
tennis lessons, jumps horses, and still plays fall AYSO soccer. The number
of activities she tried, loved for a few years, and gave up is huge.

Our local public schools have mucial instruments as part of their 4th, 5th
and 6th grade curriculum. You can opt out, but in general the vast majority
of kids do take recorder in 4th grade and try another instrument in 5th
grade. In junior high orchestra or band is an elective. So my daughter's
lessons are now during the school day.

Tracey...

Its more or less the same way here. They do recorder in 3rd, and virtually
all (last year 17 out of 18 in my DD class) take the instrumental music
lessons offered by the school. I think it is a good way to expose the kids
to it without costing huge $$$$ for the parents, and it gives the school a
potential crop of marching band members for high school :-)

least at younger ages, to have both going on.

I had a friend who insisted that her children choose at least three
things each year: one athletic, one musical and one social. She
started all of her kids on suzuki violin when they were very young, and
they branched out from there, and her daughters were in girl scouts when
they were younger. By high school, for example, one daughter was
playing violin and viola, was on the high school soccer team, and was
active at the district level for her church's youth group social action
work. One of her kids didn't care for team sports, so shifted to one of
the martial arts for the "athletic" stuff. Her kids are all well
balanced, fun people to be around, and had no problems keeping up with
their school work or finding free time to just hang out and be kids.

My own kids all did musical theater, which includes some of everything,
(not sports, exactly -- but dancing is definately athletic!) plus two
of them were very active in church youth group, one at the local level
and one at the district level. If they had chosen a different way to be
musical, I might have insisted that they find an athletic activity, as
well.

Chris...

My boys have always done both. They both started on group music
lessons in kindergarten. The emphasis was on rhythm, basic keyboard,
and "ear" development. At the younger ages the expectation for
practice was maybe 20-30 minutes a week and the parent attends class
with the child. Over time the class develops into more a straight
keyboard class, and more practice, maybe 20-30 minutes a day. I would
argue that early on a child can use a keyboard to learn piano, making
the committment to the "real" piano after a year or two. Piano
teachers might disagree. I think some piano is good just for learning
music basics, it will help later if they are in chorus or band. In 4th
grade they could start in the school band and did that on top of piano
lessons. But they didn't take instrument lessons outside of school, so
the only add-on was practice time (they both play mallet instruments
and their piano training really helped out there...they probably
practice less than other kids and do better.)

As far as sports, we have limited them to one sport a season--usually
soccer in fall, basketball in winter and golf/baseball/track in spring.
Our younger son didn't really like team sports so he has done
TaeKwonDo. I like to have them doing something physical. At the grade
school level those sports usually involve 1 practice and 1 game each
week.

They tried Scouts but neither really liked it. They play on the school
chess team which is a tournament once a month and practice after school
once a week. Our school has a built in activity period at the end of
the day, so many clubs meet then.

annie...

Our boys have been able to manage piano lessons and sports at the same
time. Remember that music lessons are usually year round, but sports
are usually only 6-8 weeks, so there will be breaks when they are only
doing music. Ours started piano at 6 and 8 and have been playing for
almost 3 years.

We have a few conflicts every now and then when soccer practice falls
on religious education nights, but we find a balance. The best way
around conflicts is to coach the team, so you can set practices to fit
your schedule. That works for us, but I realize it may not work for
everyone.

I think the important thing is to be clear about expectations. Our
piano teacher was really pushing the boys for awhile and it was getting
to be too much. He was putting on a lot of expectations that they
would master their assignments every week and was very adamant about it
being absolutely necessary to practice 20-30 minutes *every* day. The
boys just did not have the time or desire to practice as much as he
wanted, especially if we went out of town for the weekend, which we do
frequently. I let the boys know that I'm not concerned that they
master each piece in a week and if it takes 2-3 weeks, I'm fine with
that as long as they are practicing a bit each week and making some
progress. I've also asked the piano teacher if he could relax a bit.
I figure that I'm the one paying so I get to set the expectations.
If they aren't progressing fast enough for his standards, then he is
surely free to refuse to accept our business and we'll go elsewhere.

Tracey...

I think that it totally depends on the child and how much he/she wants to do
it.
Our 'rule' for our kids is that they must have at least one activity
(several families I know say that their child may have only one activity).
My DD is just about to turn 10, and in 5th grade. She dances (several
separate classes, a total of 5 hours per week over 3 days), she's in Girl
Scouts and she takes flute (at school) which she practices for 20 minutes
per day. She's very busy, but not overwhelmed. If she were overwhelmed,
I'd take out some of the dance classes. In the end, she is very busy.
Generally she gets home from school, does her homework, goes to dance class,
has a while to relax and then goes to bed. None of her activities are on
the weekend (except an occasional Girl Scout activity), so we spend the
entire weekend together as a family.

Since your child is 5, I don't really think I'd see it so much as
'commiting' to learn an instrument and do the sport, I'd see them as more
'fun activities', like we see our DD's activites. Some parents I know
locally see their children's activities as huge commitments, as though that
is going to be the child's lifelong thing, and IMO, that puts too much
pressure on the kids.

Irene...

Well, I'm not concerned at this point - I'm looking towards the future.
Part of it is also things like whether or not we would want to buy a
piano, if he decided to take piano lessons - I would probably be
annoyed if I spent a lot of money on one and then it didn't get used
(tho dh has been angling for one on and off for a while.) I don't
think ds is committed to anything at this point! I guess part of it is
that he seems to have such a natural feel for piano, which isn't
typically taught in band (which is what his school has, starting in 4th
grade iirc - no orchestra). (My friend the pianist was an exception -
he was allowed to be in my hs orchestra simply because he was so good,
but they didn't ordinarily have a piano in the orchestra.) But, I'm
pretty sure if he was taking lessons and was supposed to practice, it
would take most of the fun out of it for him.

up, so it's hard for me to compare. But, I did have assorted
activities - swimming lessons, skating lessons (both of those in
opposite seasons), tap/ballet/gymnastics class, Sunday school, and
starting in 5th grade, Hebrew school 2x/week. In 4th grade, I dropped
the tap/ballet/gymnastics class and started viola, since my parents
said I could only do one, both from a time and money standpoint. (I
also wasn't doing skating at that point, and only sometimes swimming.)

Dh was always in sports while growing up. He played trumpet, but says
he only practiced about once a week.

Right now, ds is only in soccer (1 practice, 1 game). This thought was
prompted by a visit to friends over the weekend who have a very nice
baby grand piano, and the husband is a pianist (has a Master's, and is
a church music director). He was pretty impressed by ds' touch on the
piano, which he has picked up by goofing around on my mil's piano.
When asked if he would be interested in taking piano lessons, he said
he didn't need to, because he already knew how to play piano. ;) Ah,
the arrogance of a 5 yo! But, it got me to thinking. I don't know how
serious ds will be about soccer - his first game is this upcoming
Saturday, so a bit too soon to tell.

(And in the meantime, I agreed to be on the board of a local volunteer
organization, which will probably take up about 10 hours/month of my
time...I'm already volunteering about 2-3 hours per month)

Anyhow, thoughts? It just seems like either one would require a large
commitment, and I'm not quite sure how to encourage ds, esp. since I'd
also like him to get into Sunday school and later Hebrew school...(not
to mention what dd is going to do!) I'd love for ds to be able to do
both, but I also don't want to push him too hard.

Rosalie B....

It depends on the kid. I did music, but did not do much in sports -
although we did go ice skating several times a week in the winter.
OTOH, I did Sunday school, and Girl Scouts, ballet and a theatre group
in addition to piano.

In general, as long as the kid isn't struggling in school, I think a
sport AND music will be helpful. The parents of the students that I
coached told me that their kids were better able to do their homework
when they were swimming.

My girls did swimming and ice skating, and they also had piano lessons
and later had their own horses to train and compete with, and were in
the band in school.

My sister has said that she had to be careful not to over schedule one
of her children.

Penny Gaines...

I think this is absolutely spot on. Some children love to have lots of
activities, whereas other children need more time to do their own thing.

For most children two activities is probably going to be fine: for some
one would be ample and for others three would be too few.

Ericka Kammerer...

I think it depends on the kid. Personally, my kids
do both. DS1 (11yo) does piano (1 lesson/week plus daily practice,
occasional group classes, festivals, and recitals),
percussion (at school, plus short daily practice), and dance
(2-3 1.5 hour classes per week plus rehearsals and performances).
DS2 (9yo) does piano and dance. It is busy, and we have to be
very disciplined with the homework to fit everything in. On
the other hand, neither the kids nor I would be happy dropping
either. I think both are very beneficial.
Different kinds of sports tend toward different
schedules. The boys used to do soccer, but the hard thing
with any league sports is that you tend not to get the schedule
until after you've signed up (sometimes after the season has
started!). We wouldn't have too much trouble working around
a piano lesson, which only happens once a week, but trying
to work in a couple dance classes and piano around an unknown
sports schedule that could include a game plus 2-3 practices
per week was just untenable. Dance is easier to work with
because we can choose the schedule to some degree (we can pick
which of the appropriate level classes to attend), though
things get really busy around performances. It does occasionally
mean that we have a dance/piano conflict, which we try to
resolve as fairly as we can over time.

Best wishes,
Ericka

Scott...

Keyboard Music can help you. It's software, which allows you to use
your computer keyboard to play musical instruments. It's so easy to use
that everybody can play the instrument he or she likes. You can play
the piano, violin, guitar, saxophone, marimba, organ, bass, cello,
trumpet, flute, bagpipe, koto and more than 100 kinds of musical
instruments with this excellent software!
You can find it at the link below.

toto...

That's not the same as learning to play a real instrument as typing
skills don't translate into musical skills. I have used computer
music programs to work on certain things when I had to learn a singing
part, but I don't see it as helpful for learning to play an instrument
at all.