When Feedback Doesn't Change a Child's Flute Practice
My son returned to the same flute mistakes after receiving feedback. Instead of giving another lecture, I picked up the old flute and practised beside him.
After the two flute teachers gave my son very different forms of feedback, I kept wondering how to help him step outside the identity of being “the talented one.”
I had already decided that praise alone would not prepare him for his Grade 5 exam, and criticism alone would not teach him what to do next. I wrote about that conflict in the first chapter: what a flute exam taught me about fear of failure.
Yesterday, my son and I watched The Truman Show. Its central character grows up inside a closed world built around him. When he discovers that another world exists beyond it, he must decide whether to remain with the familiar or risk going outside.
I chose the film because I hoped my son might take some strength from it. His flute problem is obviously not Truman's problem. I was responding to one emotional resemblance: the known world can remain attractive even after we learn that it is incomplete.
The old way of practising was familiar. The new teacher's guidance asked him to leave it.
I hoped the story might help him choose the door.
An inspiring story did not change the next practice
The following day, we returned to the flute.
Very little seemed different.
The intonation was still inaccurate. More importantly, he was practising in the same way as before. He repeated passages without applying the new teacher's corrections, which meant he was repeatedly practising the part that was not working.
I felt the familiar frustration rise in me: You have been given new information. Why are you ignoring it?
That question makes the problem sound like disobedience. But what looks like “ignoring feedback” can also be a gap between knowing and doing.
My son may be able to repeat what the teacher said without detecting the problem while playing. He may understand the instruction while sitting still, then lose it when breathing, fingering, reading, listening and keeping time all compete for attention. The old method is already automatic. That does not make it correct; it makes it easy to return to.
Watching a courageous decision in a film can create a feeling. It does not automatically create the smaller skills required the following afternoon: notice the error, remember the correction, slow down and repeat the changed version. The film may not have failed. I may simply have expected inspiration to perform the work of practice.
Repetition is not the same as correction
Adults often tell children to practise more because time is easy to count. Yet thirty minutes or five complete runs do not tell me what my son was learning during them.
In a study of 17 advanced piano students, Robert Duke, Amy Simmons and Carla Cash found that the strongest performances were not explained simply by practising longer or completing more repetitions. The better practisers responded to errors more strategically: they identified the problem, changed what they were doing and established a correct version before continuing.
That study involved advanced pianists, not one child preparing for Grade 5 flute. It does not give me a formula. The practical distinction I took from it was this: practice becomes productive when a player can detect a problem, choose a response and evaluate whether the response worked.
Playing the same phrase again is an action. It is not yet a strategy.
A three-year observational study by Gary McPherson and James Renwick suggested how slowly self-regulated practice can develop. Its core videotaped sample was only seven children aged seven to nine, and the authors described the findings as preliminary. It cannot tell me what is happening inside my son. It does support a modest point: young learners do not automatically arrive at practice able to set a precise goal, monitor themselves, select a strategy and evaluate the result. These behaviours must be learned and may appear inconsistently.
This changes my responsibility as a father. If I stand outside the room saying “Use the new method,” I may be asking for a sequence that is still invisible to him.
I need to make the sequence observable:
- Which two bars are we working on?
- What exactly did the teacher ask you to change?
- What will you listen or look for while playing?
- What will you do immediately when the old problem returns?
- How will you decide whether this attempt was closer?
If he cannot answer those questions, another full run may only make the old route easier to travel.
I decided to enter the experiment
We happen to have two flutes at home: a newer instrument and the old one.
I looked at them and proposed something different.
I told my son that I would take the old flute and use the new practice method. He could use the new flute. Then I proposed a long-term challenge: would he like to see which of us could pass Grade 5 first?
I made the proposal; I have not described his response because I do not want to invent agreement after the fact. Unless he chooses to join, it remains my idea. If he does join, participation must stay optional and stopping cannot count as losing. His actual September exam-entry decision must still be based on readiness and teacher guidance, not on whether his father has turned learning into a race.
Part of me liked the idea immediately. Instead of giving another lecture, I would put my own effort where my advice was. My son would see me begin, struggle, receive correction and return after mistakes. Another part of me became cautious.
A father–son competition can turn a shared problem into energy and play. It can also turn the father into another examiner.
If I improve quickly, will he see evidence that the method works—or evidence that he is losing to his father? If the exam becomes a race, will we care more about who is ahead than whether either of us is learning well? I do not yet know whether this is a clever idea. That uncertainty belongs in the experiment.
The real test is not who reaches Grade 5 first
“Who reaches Grade 5 first?” may create the invitation. It should not become the only score. The deeper test is whether learning beside my son changes what happens in the practice room.
Can I make the new method visible?
If I say that I am using a new method, he should be able to see it. I can choose one short passage, name one target, play slowly enough to hear the result, stop at the error and change one variable. That is more persuasive than repeating the teacher's instruction from a chair.
Can I accept feedback in front of him?
The first chapter was partly about my son's difficulty receiving correction.
Now I have to ask what receiving correction looks like when I am holding the flute. Can I listen without explaining why the mistake happened? Can I say, “You are right; I used the old fingering again”? Can I let a teacher correct me without becoming defensive?
If I want my son to stop protecting his image as the talented player, I cannot protect my image as the knowledgeable father.
Can we compare methods rather than worth?
I do not want the better instrument, faster progress or cleaner phrase to become proof that one person is more capable.
If he accepts the challenge, the comparison should remain specific:
- Which practice target was clear?
- Which correction carried into the next attempt?
- What will each of us change tomorrow?
These questions turn the contest toward evidence. They also allow my son to notice something useful in my practice rather than wait for my judgment of his.
Can either of us stop the challenge?
Play disappears when a person is no longer free to say that the game is not helping.
If my son becomes more defensive, hides his practice or experiences each session as a public ranking, then the challenge is working against the lesson. I need to be willing to change or end it without calling that another failure—or saying that he lost.
The flute exam already carries enough evaluation. Home does not need to reproduce the exam every evening.
His story is not mine alone to publish
There is another form of consent beyond agreeing to the flute challenge.
My son may be recognized by teachers, relatives or people in his music community. Before publishing a continuing account of his difficulties, I need to show him what I have written in a form he can understand and ask whether it feels fair. If he wants a detail removed, that request should carry more weight than my desire for a stronger essay. Writing as a father does not give me ownership of every part of my son's learning.
Perhaps this is what leaving the familiar world looks like
I watched The Truman Show with my son because I wanted him to feel brave enough to move beyond a familiar but limited world.
The next day taught me that leaving the familiar rarely happens in one cinematic decision.
In a practice room, it may look much smaller.
It is stopping after the wrong note instead of rushing past it. It is admitting that the old method feels easier. It is trying four bars slowly enough to notice the difference. It is allowing new information to interrupt a habit.
For my son, the challenge is to remain a learner when correction threatens the version of himself that adults have praised.
For me, the challenge is to stop standing safely outside that struggle.
So I have picked up the old flute.
I do not know which of us will reach Grade 5 first. I am no longer sure that is the most important result.
What I want to discover is whether my son can see that a new method feels awkward even for his father—and whether watching me accept that awkwardness gives him something a film, a lecture and another compliment could not.
This time, I am not only asking him to choose the door.
I am trying to walk through it beside him.
This story continues in Chapter 3: How Feeling Progress Changed My Son's Flute Practice.