Recommended Reading for Music Mums and Dads
Kunbi Osinoiki 
As a music parent and educator, I have struggled with how best to keep children motivated and engaged with music without resorting to coersion or causing resentment.
It isn't easy and over the years, I have found very helpful nuggets in some books that I think you may also find helpful in your music parenting journey. Below are quotes or thoughts that have helped me:
How Children Succeed by Paul Tough
The book seeks to address a number of questions including: Who succeeds and who fails? Why do some children thrive while others lose their way? And what can any of us do to steer an individual child - or a whole generation of children - away from failure and towards success?
Some passages from the book that struck me the most include:
"Children with secure attachment early on were more socially competent throughout their lives: better able to engage with preschool peers, better able to form close friendships in middle childhood, better able to negotiate the complex dynamics of adolescent social network”
“…students’ self-discipline scores from the previous fall were better predictors of their final GPAs than their IQ scores”.
“Character education takes two forms - “moral character,” which embodies ethical values like fairness, generosity, and integrity; and those that address “performance character,” which includes values like effort, diligence, and perseverance.”
(At KMC, we seek to build performance character in our students).
“…we have an acute, almost biological impulse to provide for our children, to give them everything they want and need, to protect them from dangers and discomforts both large and small. And yet we know—on some level, at least—that what kids need more than anything is a little hardship: some challenge, some deprivation that they can overcome, even if just to prove to themselves that they can… the best way for a young person to build character is for him to attempt something where there is a real and serious possibility of failure.”
"...the kids who make it are the ones who can tell themselves, 'I can rise above this little situation. I’m okay. Tomorrow is a new day.’”
The Art of Performance
by Jeroen de Flander
Jeroen is one of the world's most influential thinkers on strategy execution. His book, "The Art of Performance" seeks to answer two questions:
What drives great performance
How can we use this knowledge to help us maximise the potential in our own lives and the lives of those around us.
Jereon is convinced that greatness isn't born, it's grown and he shows how greatness can be found at the point where passion, purpose, deep practice and persistence intersect.
Atomic Habits by James Clear
Don't mistake motion for action. “When you’re in motion, you’re planning and strategizing and learning. Those are all good things, but they don’t produce a result. Action, on the other hand, is the type of behavior that will deliver an outcome”.
In modern society, many of the choices you make today will not benefit you immediately…You live in what scientists call a delayed-return environment because you can work for years before your actions deliver the intended payoff.
The ultimate form of intrinsic motivation is when a habit becomes a part of your identity. It’s one thing to say I’m the type of person who wants this. It’s something very different to say I’m the type of person who is this.
Habits are the compound interest of self-improvement. The same way that money multiplies through compound interest, the effects of your habits multiply as you repeat them. They seem to make little difference on any given day and yet the impact they deliver over the months and years can be enormous.
You do not rise to the level of your goals. You rise to the level of your system.
Which of these books have you read before or are you likely to read?
Visit https://kunbismusiccompany.com to learn more about our music learning programmes and how we support our students to be lifelong learners and lovers of music.
