# Asking Your Child "Who Played Well" After a Concert Is Actually Asking the Wrong Question

This is Wonder Piano. We provide AI-assisted piano practice for families in China, and we also take a harder question seriously: what can you do when children do not want to practice, cannot get into their practice, and parents do not know what to say? Here, you will find practice methods, along with the difficulties families can encounter when they try to put those methods into use.

When a concert ends, many parents ask their children the same question: "Who played best just now?" Children answer quickly: who came first, what the last piece was called, or which contestant had the nicest outfit. But they struggle to say whose playing had more layers of sound or which passage was handled with greater subtlety.

That does not mean a child lacks musical sensitivity. They are simply still using the easiest things to remember to make sense of a competition: rankings, applause, and results.

A common response from parents is to correct them: "You can't just look at the rankings." But after hearing this, a child will usually just nod, without actually recalling anything else. They are not refusing to agree; they simply did not hear anything else they could talk about.

A more interesting question is: "Which passage sounded most like someone speaking to you?"

![Article illustration: a concert program and listening observation notes](https://static.lianmuse.com/image/blog/ac356375fae24611c4758cc1aafc28d8.jpg)

Children often pause when asked this, because nobody has asked them that way before. In the author's account, one child thought for a long time before saying: "They played very quietly at the beginning, but then it suddenly got loud for a moment, and it startled me." That is not a professional music review, but it already describes something the child actually heard. Because nobody usually asks, the child had not even realized this counted as "understanding what they heard."

When children first start attending competitions, it is hard for them to answer "Who played more expressively?" directly. The question is too broad and feels too much like a test. But if you narrow it down to something specific their ears can catch—which passage was quiet but still audible, or which pause made them feel something was about to happen—they can find an answer. Just like the child above, they can immediately describe a concrete reaction such as "it suddenly got loud for a moment."

Musical understanding often begins this way: first comes a feeling that is hard to put into words, such as "it sounds like it's about to rain," and then, gradually, children learn more precise words to describe it. If a parent immediately translates that feeling into "That's a crescendo" or "That's a pickup," the child may instead feel that what they just said was wrong and become afraid to say more. That act of "translation" closes the door that had only just begun to open for them.

![Article illustration: quiet playing, pauses, and finding the beat again](https://static.lianmuse.com/image/blog/ffc1c7299adbb184d9a40bcb3d9899c5.jpg)

Interestingly, what is easiest to overlook in a competition is often not a wrong note, but what happens afterward. Some players pause briefly and find the beat again. Others make a small slip with their fingers, but the music keeps going. Still others play every note correctly, yet the notes feel like scattered beads, with no audible sense of why they belong together. These differences can help children understand what makes a performance good more than simply asking whether anyone played a wrong note.

The author recalls that, on the way home after the concert that day, their friend did not keep asking about the rankings. Instead, the friend acknowledged what the child had said: "You remember that so clearly." Then came another question: "Apart from who came first, do you remember how any passage sounded?" The child thought for a moment and came back with that observation: "It suddenly got loud for a moment."

After a performance, there may not need to be many questions worth carrying with you. One can be enough.

What is usually the first thing your child says after a performance? Share it in the comments. Next time, you might try asking them a different question.

*Original Chinese article: [WeChat](http://mp.weixin.qq.com/s?__biz=Mzk2NDI0NTYzOQ==&mid=2247488095&idx=1&sn=76acd99415a20e068e27881bd0f69999&chksm=c47733b7f300baa116eeaccefb1b1c3ccc061a019e09c3e602c65e2b5e2275e8ca80fb745df4#rd).*