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Honestly, I’m not sure my kids have ever consistently wanted to practice piano. But then again, neither did I. I took lessons as a kid, and there were plenty of weeks where the piano just sat there while I found every possible reason not to sit down at it. So I get it.
We’ve had weeks where they played every day without being asked, and we’ve had weeks where the piano sat there collecting dust, and I didn’t say a word about it. One of them will go months without touching it and then randomly sit down and play for an hour. That’s just kind of how it goes.
And I think that’s fine, even though it took me a while to feel that way. Today, I’m partnering with Simply Piano, an app our family has used for years, to share what I wish every parent knew before signing up for piano lessons.
Lessons Are Only Part of It
When they were younger, I had this idea that lessons plus daily practice would lead to steady progress, and if we just stuck to the schedule, it would work. What actually happened was a lot of “I’ll do it later” and me deciding that a fight about piano practice was not how I wanted to spend my evening. So we’d give ourselves grace, skip a day here and there, and just pick it back up when the time was right.
What helped was letting go of the idea that it had to look a certain way. Short practice, long practice, lessons, no lessons, it doesn’t have to be this structured commitment to be worth something. My kids know how to play piano. Not perfectly, but they can sit down and play songs they like. That happened in pieces, over the years, with a lot of inconsistency in between.
A Low-Pressure Way to Practice at Home
One thing that made a real difference in our house was Simply Piano. It’s an app that works with any keyboard or piano, listens through your phone’s microphone, and provides real-time feedback as you play. Our kids use it, and so do I. What I kept coming back to is that it doesn’t feel like a lesson; it feels like playing (that’s what keeps the kids coming back, too.)
Songs Make All the Difference
The song library is huge with pop, Disney, classical, movie music, and more. It gets updated regularly, so it doesn’t feel outdated. Plus, the songs come in different levels, so you can start with the simple ones and build from there. That matters more than you’d think, because kids are way more likely to sit down and practice when they’re playing something they recognize and like. That early win of “wait, I can actually play this real song” is what keeps them coming back.
More Than Just an App
It’s also more substantive than it looks. Music teachers design the lessons, Trinity College London accredits them, and they teach you to read music and use both hands properly. It’s won a Parents’ Choice award, Apple named it an Editor’s Choice, and Google Play gave it a Best Of, which tells you this is a great app and tool. It was built with real learning in mind.
I still think a good teacher is valuable, especially for technique and posture, things an app genuinely can’t catch, but Simply Piano filled a gap for us. It gave our kids a way to stay connected to piano in a way that helps them enjoy it, without needing me to sit next to them or remind them what the teacher said two weeks ago.
If piano has been on your radar, whether for your kids or yourself, I’d really recommend starting here. It takes the pressure off and makes it something you look forward to sitting down and doing.
