Day 258.

Tonight was group lesson and parent night at Suzuki. I'm so overwhelmed with relief after feeling totally skeptical yesterday - not skeptical about Suzuki, but wondering if Dylan could be a "good student." I feel so ashamed even saying that, because Dylan is so amazingly wonderful...and I hate feeling embarrassed over my children.

I am grateful for the "method."

Suzuki is not traditional music training. Suzuki looks at learning music as learning a mother tongue: as learning another whole language. It's through immersion, repetition, listening, modeling, affirmation (and so much more) that you truly wrap yourself fully in the musical training.

In the group class, the wonderful teacher emphasized that the children could do WHATEVER they were comfortable with. If that meant gripping your leg and sitting in your lap for the whole hour, then that's totally OK. What a relief! Dylan started out doing just that, and by the end, she was dancing with me and even cracking a smile.

In the parent class, more assurance that this was going to be just fine. The teacher emphasized what they expect from the child: only to be a child. That means whatever it means for each individual kid. No expectations are set for the children - which is amazing for that kind of disciplined method.

This is going to work so well with Dylan. She craves one on one time with me, and she's going to get lots of it through this training. The parent is the teacher's assistant. I am so excited to start this journey with Dylan, and to make this fun for her will be a really cool challenge that I'm completely ready to accept.