is Your Child Ready to Learn a Musical Instrument?

Learning a musical instrument can have a lasting impact on your child's education, quality of life and well-rounded pursuits. If your child has expressed interest in learning a musical instrument, or if you would like to test it out and see if they get interested after a few lessons, pursuing music lessons can be a great idea for young children.

Learning music and developing an ear for fine music affects children socially and mentally, can make them more adept at reading, raise their self-esteem, and increase their likelihood of attending a college or university.

Learning musical instruments gives children greater cognitive development, hand-eye coordination, concentration and attention span, and social cooperation. Taking lessons in musical instruments, like learning sports at an early age, teaches children about goal setting and how to achieve small milestones to reach bigger goals. These are all tools your child will learn to use in their other venture, like education, relationships and life.

But is your child ready for those music lessons? Can they handle the responsibility of a musical instrument?

The general age range used by guitar and piano instructors is five years old. Before the age of five a child's fingers and handbreadth may not be adequate to perform the physical manipulations on a musical instrument. If your child still wants to give it a shot, consider buying a miniature version of the instrument. Child-sized guitars are popular for this and have smaller necks with frets closer together. Your child can begin learning basic chord shapes on the smaller instrument and will naturally move into a bigger instrument as they grow.

When you find a good teacher, ask him or her to interview your child and see if they would begin teaching before or at five years of age. Exceptions are made based on child maturity.

Music teachers will need to know that your child has the motor skills and hand-eye coordination to begin learning the instrument. This will develop as time goes by, but starting too young may not be possible.

Next, can your child concentrate long enough to take a lesson? Is her attention span mature enough that she can maintain focus on one thing for at least 20 minutes?

Your child will need to be able to recognize and understand letters and numbers. Your child may not be able to read fluently, but can still learn to read music if he can recognize basic letters, say their names, and recognize patterns.

Clap a rhythm for your child. Can your child follow that rhythm? Sing a few lines of a song your child knows and see if your child can sing them back, in the correct melody.

Finally, determine if your child really wants to learn the instrument enough to attend the lessons often and practice every day.