Some children are just born leaders. They hit the ground and take the initiative and responsibility for everything they do. Unfortunately, most are not. How many times have you asked your child to do something and ended up doing it yourself? As a parent, you can do everything for your child, except for their learning and education.

The "responsible" child receives deep moral satisfaction from the fact that he's learned everything and at this point he is prepared for the musical lessons.

This type of child loves his musical training and even if everyone thinks he plays a piece perfectly well he will keep practicing that piece repeatedly. He wants to ensure himself that he really does play it perfectly. This child wants to be sure that he is in control of what he is doing, especially when it comes to performances.

These children may not even have enough obvious talent to even warrant musical training, but they amaze everyone with their persistence and perseverance. Diligence and patience. The parents of this type of child often receive compliments like this "If only my child could be so goal-oriented! He would have moved mountains!"

One day your child's persistence will pay off and he will go from the "ugly duckling" and turn into a white swan. He is even advancing way ahead of the other children with whom he started to take musical training. His uncontrollable eagerness to play music becomes stronger and more pronounced.

I want to take a moment to warn you that such "responsibility" is not always productive and in some cases may actually impede or even harm your child's progress, especially with practice or performing arts.

If the musical training program your child attends is capable of identifying this in your child, all you really need to do is praise, encourage and support your child.

What happens if the musical training program or teacher does not recognise your child's almost obsessive diligence for what it really is? You child's music teacher may be a good person, but maybe they have never worked with this type of student. It is very common for a program or teacher to simply keep increasing the students' workload or the complexity of material because the student can handle it. Eventually the time will come when your small musician, no matter how hard he works at his musical training, will not have the ability to perform without making mistakes. As time passes the mistakes increase and so he practices more until there just are not enough hours in the day.

What has happened is that your child has simply burned himself out at the beginning of his practice. This is similar to an athlete exhausting himself in the first half of a game and the team eventually losing because they just cannot perform. It is exactly the same with musician. Even with continual musical training, some remain "mediocrities" among other students. Normally they will lose interest in music and find another activity which may be best in some cases. In the worst case, the child's continually negative critiques from teachers may lead to depression and other possible future problems that can stem from this experience.