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When you practice a musical instrument by yourself, it’s a pretty solitary experience. There’s no team spirit, no friends at the training session, no coach to tell you what to do. It can be REALLY hard to be disciplined in practice – that is, to tackle the stuff that really needs work first and leave the easy pieces until the end. But even if you manage to do this, sometimes it’s not enough just to have the intrinsic satisfaction that something has been achieved. You need to play the pieces for someone else regularly (not just the teacher), and get feedback from that someone, be it in the format of applause, a report, an award, or maybe just lots of gushy comments about how well you’re doing. It is these things that keep most students practising in the long term.

So what it really comes down to is praise and recognition. Everybody loves positive feedback – whether from a teacher, a parent, a boss or an employee. Receiving praise is a huge motivator for most people.

Take my two children for example,...