Some parents inquiring about our guitar lessons for their child wonder “Will music help my child become more confident?”
After more than forty years of teaching children, my answer is yes, but probably not for the reason most people think.
Parents (I was one, now a grandparent) naturally want their children to be confident. Some children seem to be born that way. Others seem to have an empty confidence bucket.
I think confidence develops differently than most parents imagine.
Confidence follows competence.
We often think confidence is a feeling. I see it differently. Confidence is the absence of a feeling: fear, reluctance, or hesitation. It is the willingness to begin a task because previous experience tells us, “I can do this.”
Confidence is a natural result of success.
At Childbloom®, we don’t spend our time trying to make children feel successful. We help them become successful. That happens by helping them discover what learning itself is about.
I see this every year with children who are just beginning to read music.
Many of them will open a new piece, look at the page, then look at me with an incredulous expression.
“I can’t learn that!” I see this reaction all the time. In fact, it’s a familiar (and amusing to me) moment because I already know the child can learn it, or else I wouldn’t present it.
So I give the weekly assignment. “Play the first note.”
Even the youngest reader usually smiles at the absurd simplicity of the assignment and immediately plays it. “Great,” I say. “You’ve finished this week’s assignment.”
Then I ask if they’d like some extra credit – the second note. The student typically quickly plays that one too.Before long they’ve learned the first measure. Then the second. A few minutes earlier the page looked impossible. Now they’re playing it.
What changed?
Not the music.
The child!
Young children naturally see a task as one whole. They don’t yet recognize that what appears to be one large project is really just a collection of small steps. As they mature, they gradually discover that difficult things become manageable when approached one piece at a time.
When music lessons for children are carefully sequenced, success becomes a regular experience rather than an occasional accident. Every new note, every rhythm mastered, and every piece learned becomes another small victory. Those quiet little “aha” moments gradually change the way children see themselves. They experience the joy of learning something new. Instead of approaching a monster, they are approaching a challenge.
Eventually they discover something much more important than how to play a guitar. They discover that confidence is something they build by learning, persisting, and accomplishing one small success after another.
That lesson extends far beyond learning a musical instrument.
It applies to school. Sports. Friendships. Work. Life.
Parents naturally want confident children. So do we. But we don’t pursue confidence directly.
We pursue competency and learning.
When children become capable, they begin to trust themselves. They no longer approach new challenges wondering, “Can I do this?” They understand, “I don’t know how to do it…yet.”
That may be the most valuable lesson a child can learn.
Children become confident by becoming capable.
That’s one of the guiding principles behind the Childbloom® Guitar Program.