When Should my Child Start Piano Lessons?

This is such a common question I receive as a piano teacher.

For ten years I told most parents that they could start their children around five years old. I thought it seemed reasonable. I answered this prior to having any children of my own, and that was my response prior to reading Mrs. Curwen’s Pianoforte Method.

What does Mrs. Curwen have to say about children taking piano lessons? How old should the child be when they start taking lessons?

The short answer is that most children should be older than five.

She says that,

“A few simple experiments in imitating hand and finger movements will prove to any parent that the average child of seven or eight has a great deal more motor control than the average child of five.”

So how old should a child be when they start piano lessons?

Maybe seven or eight.

Before answering this stately question from above that so many want to know, she first answers the question of

“At what age should the musical education of a child commence?”

Her reply?

In babyhood.

She talks about singing to your child as a baby and bouncing them on your knee to the beat of a strong tune.

The child then progresses to rote singing. (Rote singing is simply singing based upon imitating and repetition.) This can be done in the home or kindergarten.

She goes on to say that,

“While children are singing by ear, marching to well-accented tunes, or performing the rhythmical movements of action songs, they are learning music in the concrete, and laying up in their minds a store of experiences to which the pianoforte teacher can appeal when the more formal systematic study of music commences.”

A child should first be introduced to music notation while singing. Singing doesn’t entail understanding an instrument. Since a child is solely using their voices, they can better focus on the notation at hand.

What notation does Mrs. Curwen suggest using first?

She suggests none other than Mr. Curwen’s Tonic Sol-fa Method.

Following the introduction to the Tonic Sol-fa Method, Mrs. Curwen then moves onto suggesting a child to begin piano sometime after five years old.

Mrs. Curwen does not lay down any hard and fast guidelines. She says,

“It is more a question of intelligence than of age; but I am sure that, as a rule, we begin too soon.”

She goes onto explain that the average five year old child is not ready in mind or body to begin pianoforte. Their fine motor skills will develop so much more by the time they are seven or eight.

She finished her thoughts reminding us about the mental processes that must be gone through everytime a child reads a note on a page:

1. to think of the name of the note on the staff.
2. to find the corresponding place on the keyboard.
3. to consider what amount of time it is to occupy.
4. to make up his mind which finger to use.

Keep these four points in mind as you consider whether your child is ready to embark on their piano playing journey yet.

If you are a piano teacher or mother of the industrious type, you can take a look at The First Piano Book for Pianoforte Students. This is a book originally written by Karl Grobe, but John Curwen adapted it to fit the Tonic Sol-fa pupil.

I will warn you, though, if you look at The First Piano Book, you will be persuaded to look through many more books until you figure out how to read the First Piano Book.

(Quotes in this post were taken from the 31st Edition of Mrs. Curwen’s Pianoforte Method – The Teacher’s Guide. See pages 2 and 3.)