Dr. Anita Collins, music educator and author of The Music Advantage, explains the surprising and long-lasting positive effects of music on the teen brain. Your teen doesn’t have to be a prodigy to benefit from picking up an instrument!

Full show notes

If you feel like your child isn’t living up to their full potential because they get distracted too easily or lose focus of their own goals, just imagine how hard it will be for them to complete important tasks as adults when their responsibilities lie outside of their personal interests. Today, teens have so much going on in their lives that it can be difficult to commit to tasks that they’re not particularly passionate about: maintaining good grades for college admissions, managing chores, and consistently showing up for work. Fortunately, there are ways to help your teen develop discipline in their life.

It’s great if your teen has a personal hobby that helps them develop a routine. Activities like sports, scouting, and working on art are all great ways to inspire your teen to regularly follow up with their interests. However, as they begin to take on more time-consuming responsibilities, some of their hobbies might fall to the wayside, and they can start to falter in keeping up with more mundane, yet necessary tasks. Teens that haven’t practiced discipline might start to take detrimental shortcuts on homework when the assignment is too difficult or delay submitting applications when they can’t rely on pure interest. If this behavior continues to develop into a pattern, teens may find themselves without the stamina to sustain themselves through higher education or when they enter the workforce.

That’s exactly what I talk about in this week’s podcast episode with Dr. Anita Collins, author of her new book, The Music Advantage: How Music Helps Your Child Develop, Learn, and Thrive. Dr. Collins serves as an award-winning educator, researcher, and writer in the field of brain development and music learning at both the University of Canberra and the University of Melbourne. She’s also written one of the most watched Ted education films ever made, “How Playing an Instrument Benefits Your Brain,” and conducted research about how practicing an instrument can help young adults implement lasting changes in their brain, making her exactly the right person to talk to about developing discipline for teens.

Self-Discipline That Lasts

In our interview, we talk about Dr. Collins’ neurological approach to helping teens develop discipline through music. While you’ll have to tune in to the full podcast to hear the extent of her research, one aspect of playing an instrument that helps teens develop discipline on a neurological level is practice.

Perhaps the most apparent link between developing decision-making skills and playing an instrument is the dedication required to master one. But before we get into how practicing a musical instrument can help change your teenager’s brain structure, it’s important for you to know that it is in fact possible to get your teen to stick to their goals, pick up their trombone, and, well ... practice!

Throughout the years that Dr. Collin’s has worked with teens and young adults, she’s gathered a few tactics that parents can use to help motivate their children to consistently pick up their instruments:

• Designating a specific time period for your teen to practice
  Whether it’s for 20 minutes before school every day or for an hour after soccer practice on Fridays, having a designated time period every week dedicated to practicing music can help your teen internalize their mental preparation. If their body adjusts to a regular schedule to play music, then they’re more likely to revisit the task because they both mentally and physically expect to be playing music. Dr. Collins says you can help clue your kids to practice by letting them know that there are “20 minutes till dinner,” automatically setting a clock for them to make some time.
• Using a literal timer to help limit your teen’s practice anxiety.
  Sometimes teens face anxiety about completing their tasks because they think they might take a long time. When kids do homework for hours on end, it can be daunting to constantly revisit another task that you feel like you need to get better at. However, this can be frustrating for beginners who feel like they haven’t progressed and might get discouraged or stuck trying to improve until they notice a difference. Setting a timer for playing an instrument can cut through some of the anxiety around mastery, and you can reassure them that over time, they’ll start to notice a difference.
• Using the idea of a social environment as a stick/carrot incentive.
  One aspect about playing an instrument that teens can relate to doing well in homework, getting into a good college, or succeeding at work is the social quality. When playing an instrument, there are many social settings that your teen might be either required or tempted to participate in. For example, you might consider enrolling your child in community lessons at the local music center or having them take band class as an elective. In this case, they might be motivated because they know that other people are depending on them to do well. On the other hand, your teen might want to practice at home so that they’re good enough to perform at a talent show or at parties. If they have to play in front of an audience at a recital or in front of friends, they might start to realize that practicing consistently will produce some kind of payoff.  In any case, you can get your teen to consistently practice by asking the question, “How well do you want to do when you play in front of others?”
• Give your teen the power to choose when they practice.
  Dr. Collins says that sometimes all teens want is to make their own decisions. This is particularly wise because it helps teens feel independent while reinforcing the impact of their decision-making skills. One way you can do this, according to Anita, is by striking a compromise with your teen. “You have to play for 5 hours every week, but you get to decide when those hours are. At the end of the week, we’ll check in and see how you did.” This approach can help teens realize that playing their instrument for five hours on Friday night might not be the best approach. They’ll get tired halfway through practice and realize that it’s easier to break into more manageable pieces like any other responsibility likely to come their way. 

This is how your teen establishes habits that allow them to maintain a routine even after they stop playing their instrument. Because they’ve had experience with negative consequences from failing to practice, increasingly positive payoff from adhering to long-term development, and managing time commitment among their other responsibilities, teens will be able to convert responsibility into habit through practice.

The Neurology of Learning an Instrument

But wait, how is it that playing an instrument is going to help your teenager stay focused on other tasks? Just because they’ve practiced playing an instrument, it doesn’t mean they’re going to be able to stay focused when doing their homework, right? One is loud and noisy and takes your full concentration, whereas the other is an internal process. Well, during the podcast, we discuss how developing discipline through practicing a musical instrument works on a neurological level.

One great example of this is how playing an instrument changes the way we read...