Guitar Teachers: What to do when your student breaks his arm

[Jeff]

I've got a student that broke his arm yesterday, but doesn't want to completely fall behind and wait 6 weeks.

To complicate matters further, he's 10 years old. Both he and his mom want to continue with lessons though; they are insistent on it.

I haven't seen the severity of it yet or what limitations it's going to cause, but I was thinking of going into some techniques involving just the left hand (fretboard) and then also perhaps dive deeper down the music theory rabbit hole. Bearing in mind he's only 10, it can't get too complicated, but perhaps he can use this time to brush up on that.

Any ideas? This is a unique problem for me, as it's never occurred before.

[noodles]

How long has he been playing?

[Jeff]

Originally Posted by noodles

How long has he been playing?

He's been playing for 3 years now, though hasn't gotten more serious about it until recently.

[Seanbabs]

I think you are right with maybe some legato stuff, and most of all, theory. I am not sure how much theory he knows, but basic theory is simple enough for a 10 year old.

[Demeyes]

If he broke his picking hand then I would say show him some legato stuff. It might be a bit much for him but a few basic melodies and licks could be used. Maybe even just some exercises to build up his legato strength and endurance and to make him aware that not everything needs to be picked.
I'd recommend trying to get him to practice some listening too. Get him to try and pick out some note intervals you play and sing back melodies after one listen to try and help his ear develop. That kind of thing at that age should help him develop a load and would go nicely in hand with some theory you show him.

[Jeff]

Originally Posted by Demeyes

If he broke his picking hand then I would say show him some legato stuff. It might be a bit much for him but a few basic melodies and licks could be used. Maybe even just some exercises to build up his legato strength and endurance and to make him aware that not everything needs to be picked.
I'd recommend trying to get him to practice some listening too. Get him to try and pick out some note intervals you play and sing back melodies after one listen to try and help his ear develop. That kind of thing at that age should help him develop a load and would go nicely in hand with some theory you show him.

Good point on both, but especially the listening. That's a great idea.

[darren]

Break his other arm.

[Soopahmahn]

Originally Posted by darren

Break his other arm.

That'll learn the careless bastid.

[Mehtab]

Wirelessly posted (A Destroyer of short people: Mozilla/5.0 (iPod; U; CPU like Mac OS X; en) AppleWebKit/420.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.0 Mobile/4B1 Safari/419.3)

Concentrate on teaching him theory.

[Cameron]

I have taught lessons in the past and although I never had this problem, I would suggest concentrating on fretting hand technique and legato playing. I'd also throw in some basic theory unless you have worked on that and then I would just start working his theory and having him practice that instead of guitar, obviously.