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For most parents who have children who play musical instruments, getting the child to practice is a chore. It is not uncommon, therefore, to find the parent constantly nagging the child to practice, and the child doing everything he or she can to resist doing so. Visual Mind Mapping is one tool that can help make the process of getting children to practice their instruments easier for all involved. With Visual Mind Maps, parents and children together can organize a practice schedule for the child that “maps out” practice times and duration into one, spatially formatted, and intuitive diagram that the child can easily understand. Moreover, parents and children can make use of colors and images to make organizing the schedule fun and help motivate the child to follow it. Parents, therefore, will find Visual Mind Maps incredibly beneficial for making the process of getting their child to practice less painful.

What are Visual Mind Maps and How Are They Created?

A Visual Mind Map is “a means of organizing information that allows individuals to create diagrams, pictures, and other graphic visuals in order to show the relationship between ideas or other types of information”. With a Visual Mind Map, the creator makes use of colors and symbols to construct the map and represent his or her ideas in a non-linear format. When creating a Visual Mind Map, the individual would usually begin by showing the key topic or main idea of the information as a graphic image, located in the center of the map. Any themes surrounding the main idea are shown on “branches” that are attached to the central image. Subsequent themes of less importance are then attached to these branches using “child branches”, and so on. The resulting diagram is a “map” of the ideas and information presented that includes the images, visual graphics, and colors the individual associates with each of the themes and ideas.

Organizing a Practice Schedule for Children Using a Visual Mind Map

Everyday, a mom and her child go to battle over trying to get him to practice his musical instrument. Today is no exception, the mom now decides that there must be an easier way to get him to practice, and decides to organize a schedule with him using a Visual Mind Map. Though reluctantly, the boy agrees to construct the map with his mom, and together they start the map by placing an image representing his lessons in the map’s center. The mom lets her son pick the four days on which he will practice, and they divide the map into sections representing these days with “branches” that they attach to the central topic. They next list the times on each day the boy will practice and the length of time for each practice on “child branches”. Throughout the Visual Mind Map, the mom lets her son choose any colors and images he wants to make the map fun and creative. When they have completed the map, it looks similar to the attached Visual Mind Map diagram.

Easier Practice Sessions as a Result of Visual Mind Mapping

Today, the mom listens from the next room as her son practices his instrument. Unlike days in the past, she did not have to nag or argue with him to get him to prepare for his weekly music lesson. Since constructing the Visual Mind Map, the woman has found that her son is much more motivated on his own to practice; each day, he looks at the map to see when he is to practice and for how long, without any prodding from her. Moreover, because her son was able to help create the map, even adding his own pictures and colors to it, he is much more exited to follow it than he was the linear schedule she drew up for him before. Practice time is now a peaceful one for both the mom and her son, and the arguments to get him to stick to his practice schedule is a thing of the past.