Piano

Ellie hates practicing piano. Hates it. Haaaaates it.

So Monday of last week, four days before Ellie's piano lesson, she still had not practiced even one time.  She came home from school and did her homework (she was whiny about it, which is a bad sign for piano) and then it was time to practice.

First she flat-out refused. Then she tossed her piano book on the floor. Then she tossed herself on the floor and rolled around, groaning like practicing the piano was doing her actual physical harm. To add another layer of pain, she was not only supposed to practice the songs, this week she was supposed to fill in the notes on the page before she played the music.

I tried for half an hour to get her to sit down and fill in the notes. I sat next to her and asked her to just say the notes to me and I would write them in. She did it very slowly, with each letter coming from a place of utter torment. I would say, "You know that note, don't you? What's that one?" After 5 minutes of moaning, she would finally cry out in agony, "C!" And I would say, "And what's right above C? You know that, right?" and she would moan and clutch her stomach and roll around and bark out, "D!"

It went on like that, note after painful note, until we finally finished the first song. We still had two more songs to fill in before she could even start playing! I was at the end of my patience, so I gave in and filled in the next two songs myself while she lay on the floor in a heap. And after I filled in the next two songs, she got up and sat at the piano and played. The next three days she practiced all of her songs so that on her lesson day she knew them pretty well. Count that battle half won.

So on Thursday I dropped her off at the lesson, ran to the grocery store, then picked her up after the lesson. The teacher said she did great and we drove back home. As soon as we walked in the door, Ellie says, "Oh, I had to tell my piano teacher that you filled in the notes for me." I was mortified. I said, "Why did you tell her that?! You told her that you did some of it, right? Remember that you told me some of the notes and I just wrote them down?" Ellie said, "No, I didn't. You did it all." I was so mad.

I said, "Well, I shouldn't have done that. You are doing it all yourself from now on." But I still couldn't shake being mad. Later that night when she was in the bathtub and I was reading on the bed, I heard her tell Greg, "Mommy's mad at me because I told the teacher that she filled in the notes for me. But she did fill in the notes!"

I wanted to shout, "I'm mad because you threw me under the bus! Your own mother! You sat at that piano and cried like I was making you drown a kitten, but did I tell your teacher that? No, I didn't! You rolled around on the floor like you were being brutally and senselessly tortured, but I did not say one word to your teacher about it. It's a circle of trust, kid!"

But of course I was so mad because I was mad at myself for giving in and doing it for her in the first place. She probably did me a favor by telling the teacher and embarrassing me. Cause I'm not doing a thing for that kid ever again. She's on her own.