Many teachers have firm ideas about when a young student is ready for violin lessons. Or instrument lessons in general. Here are the rules I have heard: the child can

1. stand or sit still for a fairly extended period of time.
2. listen to and follow orders from a stranger.

But what to do when parents wants their child to start music lessons and said child cannot seem to do either of the above?

Many would say to wait. I, however, almost always give it a try. Why?

Some kids need time to get used to “strangers.” Especially if they haven’t had the opportunity to observe the teacher before starting lessons. All kids are different, and we have to be flexible. I break “the rules” all the time if I think the situation warrants it, listening to my intuition. Sometimes I will even let a child put the bow on the string almost right away (to be done only at lessons with me) if I think it will help open his eyes to the possibilities of the instrument. 

But my biggest lesson in this regard came from my very first student: my older daughter. 

Without a doubt, she was the liveliest child I have ever had the privilege to teach. She was a perpetual motion machine from the time she took her first steps at age 9 months (and started running almost immediately afterwards). If you were to see the photos of our house when she was in her twos and threes, you would see that everything is three feet off the ground, including the Christmas tree. If I dared to put my coffee cup down on a table and walk away, she would barrel down the hallway to get to it before I could. She gave the concept of babyproofing new meaning. All the photos you would see of her from that era were either being clutched by me and/or or her father, or she was halfway out of the frame. It was a non-stop exercise in thinking and moving faster than she did, which was exhausting.

I was so desperate to find an outlet for her energy that when she was almost 4, I decided she should have piano lessons. I took her to the only Suzuki teacher in the area, Robert Flanik. He regularly taught in the more disadvantaged parts of Cleveland, and as a result, he couldn’t make enough money teaching, so he ran a jukebox/pinball machine rental business on the side. He had studied with Oscar Peterson and had been a Big Ten football player. In fact, he was so enormous that I remember craning my neck to look up at him on the rare occasion he stood up (he didn’t want to scare the kids). 

This extremely patient man agreed to take on my daughter even though she wouldn’t listen to anyone except me. I had to stand next to her at the piano and repeat every request he made of her or she would giggle and goof off. You would think that such an enormous man would make her a little timorous, but no, not her. To his credit, he allowed this to go on when all the Suzuki manuals I saw said that the parent should never interfere. If he had followed the rules, she would not have studied the piano, as she wasn’t “ready.”

However, by the time she was almost five, she was well into the second book and could play everything crosshanded (meaning the right-hand melody with the left hand and vice versa), starting on any key I indicated to her. 

So she wasn’t ready? She was ready, alright. It’s that she was so physically and intellectually energetic that she couldn’t control herself easily. And she thought it was funny to challenge her teacher. But when she had something to concentrate on, she calmed right down. For the first year, lessons were a little chaotic, but she made fast progress. And then she asked to start the violin.

Shortly afterwards, we left to live in the Middle East, and I had to take over her music education on both instruments. We were both sorry to leave Mr. Flanik. 

His second business proved to be his tragic undoing. Not long after we left Cleveland, he was murdered by a drug addict trying to rob him while he was delivering a pinball machine to one of his customers. When I heard about this a year later (we were isolated in the 1980s), I cried for months. He left a wife and six children, five of whom were adopted.

I am sure he would be pleased how my daughter turned out. All that excess energy has proved useful: she has two master's degrees (one in violin performance), a highly responsible job, and four kids who all play the violin. You would never know what a pest she had been when she was small. No one believes me either.

Many would have said that she was not ready for lessons when she was four years old, but she was just a highly active, energetic, and mischevious kid who was certainly ready for lessons but needed a different approach from most other students.. To have denied her lessons, which she loved, would have been a huge mistake, and her genius teacher, Mr. Flanik, recognized this, bless him. 

Forty-three years later, I still tear up when I think of him. He not only taught my daughter when most Suzuki teachers would not have (according to everything I read at the time and saw in the Suzuki courses I later took), but he insisted that I start teaching, which was something that would have never occurred to me and has led to a very long and satisfying career. I wouldn’t be writing this if it weren't for him.

So, whenever I see a small child who has difficulty standing still and doesn’t seem ready to start lessons, before making a decision about him, I think of my daughter, how most teachers would not have accepted her, and the saintly-patient Mr. Flanik who understood that the rules don't always apply. He was not only a huge influence on my daughter's life, but he completely changed the course of mine. We never got the chance to thank him.

And we still miss him.