Milestones for a child

I had a thought tonight.  Quick background:  as we've been working on moving to a new town and selling our house, my youngest son (just turned 3) had quite a spell of baby talk, whining, crying, and general silliness.  (Thankfully, his toilet skills remained excellent.)

I have noticed, and this was my theory throughout the summer, that when children are about to hit a big milestone in their growth, they get insecure about the changes ahead and "revert" to more infantile behavior.  (I think adults do this too sometimes.)  I really think the moving transition was behind most of the sometimes annoying, sometimes adorable, behavior my son had these past few months.

Now, it is almost sad for me to see that he has jumped ahead to a new maturity and independence in his social relations.  He has become assertive, especially with his older brother, calm, and is showing off some impressive pre-reading skills.   He makes facial expressions that reveal a sort of arrogant confidence in his status as "big boy."

Well, this observation relates to everything parents experience with their children, who are always growing and changing, but I also wonder if it relates to violin lessons and practicing.

Sometimes,  a student will become very frustrated at their lack of abilities or progress, right before they make a major improvement in their playing.  It is as though their standards have become higher, as their ear and understanding improves, and then there is a breakthrough in the actual playing.

What is this like for parents practicing with younger children?  Does it get more emotional or more difficult to get them to practice at all, when they hit these pre-breakthrough spots?   I wonder if this point would give me a better understanding and point of encouragement to share with my students and their parents when they have practice meltdowns.

I think I shall continue to observe to see if this theory is substantiated. . .

Changes

As I write this, I am sitting in our new home in Marion, Indiana, just a few days after moving from Fort Wayne.  My husband Jason Thompson teaches full-time in the music division at Indiana Wesleyan University, and we have made the move into a lovely house around the corner from the campus.  It's a very short walk to work now!

It was very hard to make this decision, as I have had wonderful friends and students in Fort Wayne for the past 4 years and more.  We haven't severed our ties in Fort Wayne---we are still going up for church on Sundays---but I did have to pass most of my students to new teachers.  I think it still hasn't hit me how much I am going to miss them.

I am working on updating my website to attract business traffic from our new area in Northeast Indiana:  I'm guessing most of my students will come from Marion via my university contacts, but I am hoping to continue to get wedding gigs from all the surrounding cities: Wabash, Huntington, Muncie, Anderson, Kokomo, etc. as well as continuing to play in Fort Wayne.   I've had about 1 wedding per month this year, all for solo violin.  It's been an adventure, and I'm just now starting to feel really at home up there carrying the entire music along myself.  It's more typical that musicians play in quartets or trios for these events, but there is definitely a market for just one musician to fill in the live music where there might not be any, such as in a remote country field or quiet lakeside, or simply for a lower budget wedding.  Not the same as a fancy big-city wedding with a quartet, but I am starting to get used to it and really quite enjoy the setting.

Finally,  I had a fantastic photoshoot a few weeks ago and I'm going to be sharing some of the lovely pictures from my friend and fellow violinist Ashley Smith at Aayria Bella Photography.  She has a ton of creative energy and we had so much fun during the whole thing.  Some of the pictures have a special glow---I think it was 90 degrees or so that evening, especially when we were shooting in the church balcony.

My upcoming plans include a trip to Indianapolis for the first meeting of the Indiana Suzuki Association, preparing to teach a music appreciation course at Indiana Wesleyan University, and playing at a few more weddings and any number of special church events.  We have started a new group at our church this summer that we call, "The 17th Century Praise Band."  It's a combination of 2 baroque violinists, 1 organist, 1 trumpet player, and 1 recorder/saxophone player.  As the title suggests, we perform mostly 17th century music with occasional excursions into the 16th and 18th centuries.  Love it!