Every aspiring classical pianist wants to learn to play Beethoven’s “Für Elise.” Some two hundred years after its composition, it’s still irresistible. And the good news is that the well-known theme is very simple. The harmony consists of only four chords, meaning that it can be taught by rote. The hands don’t play together very much — they just overlap. In other words, you can show someone how to play it even if they don’t read music and don’t have a lot of experience.

What many people don’t realize is that “Für Elise” has two other themes that are lesser known than the iconic A-section. These parts are not for beginners.

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“The bottom of the nose belongs down here, and the eyebrows should hit here. You can improve the perspective on the house in the background by incorporating these lines. Also, why is the sky a strip of blue at the top?”

We know that there are developmental stages that children’s artwork goes through as they learn, so we don’t expect kids to draw like adult professionals. Dena Luchsinger makes the case that it’s just as unhelpful to a growing writer to point out all of their mistakes.

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Each human being is on our own unique developmental timetable. It doesn't matter whether you learn to sit up at five months or eight months as long as you learn to sit up. Don’t let your pediatrician scare you — it's okay if your child isn't walking or talking on the same day as everyone else who was born the same day. Everyone is different.

Unfortunately, traditional school requires that everyone born within a few months of each other hit specific cognitive milestones as a group.

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Though there are certainly times when dogged determination can carry the day, it’s also true that discouragement leads to a lot of quitting, even though major motion pictures are not made to tell those stories.

Trying harder doesn’t always yield results.

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When you’re writing an essay, you have to organize your thoughts, create an outline, and incorporate your research, while crafting sentences and paragraphs — and these skills depend on solid handwriting or typing skills, confident spelling and punctuation, and strong mental stamina.

This is a lot to manage. So whenever possible, we want to isolate skills. To do this, we use Tiny Tasks. We want to tell the student exactly what’s expected, ask them to carry out the task, and praise them for a job well done. Then we do the next thing, and offer praise. 

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