Building Life Skills Through Music

Learning to play an instrument can teach various life skills. For kids, the obvious one is how to use the instrument you’ve chosen to make music. It has been said that music has many benefits to improve your quality of life, but it also can teach some life skills that can translate into other areas. For example, to learn to play a new instrument, you need to be strong in the areas of discipline and persistence.

Here are seven skills that can be achieved by learning music in your home.

1. Big Picture Mentality - This is helpful with many areas in life. When setting a goal, it’s helpful to keep that goal front and centre as a reminder that all the work done is inching closer to achieving that goal. Whether it’s mastering an instrument, playing a particular piece, or writing an exam, realize that the hard steps of learning are the stepping stones for getting closer to achieving the goals. All the little notes on a sheet of music, when put together, produce the most wonderful symphony.
2. Perseverance - When you have that big picture mentality, this can help you to persevere. Practice makes perfect! This skill will help your child keep going even when things are hard. Part of this process is learning that it’s okay when a particular piece is hard, but it will get easier as they keep practicing.
3. Patience - For children, patience is very hard to come by sometimes! But like the skill of perseverance, patience is needed to keep going towards reaching the goal. Reminding your children that it’s okay to feel discouraged, but they must learn how to pick yourself up again and keep on going. It’s important to be patient with yourself because we are not perfect. Everyone needs to have patience! It’s also tempting to want to skip steps along the way because it seems tedious. But even the easy parts need to be practiced, not just the hard pieces.
4. Problem-solving - Like many subjects, there are tough pieces that may be hard to figure out. Rather than letting the problems deter them, teach them how to think of ways they can improve or work around a particular problem. Maybe they need to ask someone for help or do some research. Practicing this will encourage your child’s skills in creativity as they work towards finding different ways to help work on those tough pieces as well.
5. Time Management - Quality depends on the quantity of time that is put into achieving a goal. Imagine the difference between someone who practiced for half an hour as opposed to someone who practiced for many. The evidence will be shown in their performance (unless you’ve got a musical prodigy!). For most, people need to make the time to practice, and it needs to be enough time to work on those more difficult parts and to practice the piece on a whole, from start to finish. This is where goal-setting meets schedules. Your child will benefit by using the time management skill with music alongside daily chores and schoolwork. They will also learn to realize how much time is needed for tasks as they get used to it and be able to plan accordingly with more ease.
6. Working Together with Others - If your children join a choir or play in a band with other children, they must learn to work together. This encompasses some of the other skills listed, like patience and perseverance, but it also is a parallel to the big picture mentality. They have to see and hear the end result and work together to make sure everyone gets their part right. Later on, when your children are out in the workforce, they will have to apply this skill when working with a team.
7. Stress Relief - Music on a whole is a stress reliever for many. Some people like to write in journals, draw or paint pictures, or read books, and some like to sing songs or play an instrument to ease their minds and relax. Music is a great way to give your children a way to calm down when they are having a rough day. Learning what you can use as a healthy way to de-stress can be a great skill to have when problems come again.

The gift of music is so much more than musical notes and instruments. It can be a great teacher of life skills for your children to learn and take with them as they grow.

Here are even more benefits of using music in your homeschool that you can check out too!

This article has been written by homeschooling staff writers of The Canadian Schoolhouse (TCS). Enjoy more of our content from TCS contributors and staff writers by visiting our Front Door page that has content on our monthly theme and links to all our content sections.