How Much Should My Child Be Practicing? It's not what you Think

This is one of the questions I get asked the most as a piano teacher and mom: "How much time should my child be practicing?" Here's my honest answer — it depends. It depends on the outcome you want. But almost more importantly, it depends on the frequency.

Frequency Over Duration

I love to think about practice in terms of frequency, not just minutes on a clock. Here's what I mean. Let's say your child has five minutes in the morning before school. Then five minutes when they get home from school. And then five minutes after brushing their teeth at night.

That's three separate five-minute touches with the instrument. Add it up, and that's 15 minutes of practice — but it doesn't feel like "practice time" to a kid the way one long 15-minute sit-down session does. It's just a few small check-ins with the piano throughout the day.

Start Small, Then Build the Frequency

If you're just starting out, don't put pressure on yourself or your child to sit down for a big chunk of time. Start with five minutes, once a day. That's it.

Once that starts to feel normal, you double the frequency — five minutes, twice a day. Then, over time, you can start moving up the minutes themselves — from five, to eight, to ten minutes a session.

Let's say your child eventually gets to 10 minutes a day. From there, you can double the frequency again — 10 minutes, twice a day.

Why This Works

As you increase the frequency of practice, you're doing two things at once:

1. You're building the muscle. Just like anything physical, the more often you do it, the stronger and more natural it becomes.

2. You're building familiarity. The instrument stops being something your child "has to" sit down for, and starts being something they just... do. Like brushing their teeth.

That's why I love thinking about practice this way — in terms of time and frequency, together. It takes the pressure off the clock and puts the focus on consistency, which is really what builds a musician over time.

Want more practical tips like this for your family's music journey? Follow along with New Song Music Academy for more.