Well, we’ve all seen it time and time again. The enthusiasm and excitement about the opportunity for the child to learn a real musical instrument.

But when the initial vision of an instant ability to play the instrument fades, the notion of practising at least five days a week loses its appeal – and ultimately another budding musician, who had the ability to achieved a lot as a musician, gives up.

So what, practically, can be done to reduce the drop-out rate?

There’s been a huge amount of research into this issue, and the best answer focuses on giving the parent the tools to motivate and encourage the young musician week by week and day by day.

In this way, “go and practise the violin” becomes an engagement between parent and child.

However, like so many ideas, this is one that can sound great in principle but is not always that easy to put into practice.

Which is why Caswell Strings has developed a series of short articles each of which can help parents to encourage and motivate their children to keep practising and keep playing – no matter what the instrument and no matter what style of music is being taught.

This series of articles is now appearing on the Facebook page of Caswell Strings, and I do hope that you will have a moment to look at them.

Then either print them off to give to parents or you can simply direct the parents to the page, so they can read for themselves.

The first article on “How can I persuade my child to practise?” is now on the site, and new articles will be added each week to build up into a full set of ways of enhancing the enjoyment and success of pupils and students as they learn to play an instrument.

You can find the first article by clicking here.