At what age is it better to learn to play the drums?

My child started learning drums when he was 4 years old and one month old. He is now over 5 years old, which means he has been learning drums for more than a year.

When we sent it to school, our parents really didn’t understand anything. Similar to the question, the children liked it and learned it after trying it out.

But if I had to choose again now, I would choose to let my children wait until they are at least 5 years old before starting to learn.

Drums have requirements on children’s height, weight, and small muscle groups. When they are young, it is difficult to complete the movements according to standards. Even if the drum stool is adjusted to the lowest level, it cannot reach the ground. If the pedal hammer is adjusted to the lightest level, it cannot be stepped on by leg strength alone. Once the drum starts to be beaten, the tiger's mouth cannot be closed tightly. It’s not that I don’t want to, but I really can’t.

When I discovered these problems during the sparring process, I thought about interrupting the child's learning process. But my kid really likes it, so it doesn’t make sense. So, I had to persevere. There was a period of time in which I wanted to play well but my physical conditions were not met, which was very embarrassing. Now that I am over 5 years old, I am doing better, but it is difficult to achieve the ideal state if I want to do training that requires higher performance, such as speeding up. I have discussed with the teacher that at this stage, we will not do too much training to improve his functions, but that will be enough.

In addition, playing drums requires certain intelligence, and you need to learn music theory. In fact, this is the case for learning musical instruments. Taking mathematics as an example, the ideal situation is for children to be able to add, subtract, multiply and divide, and at least be able to add within 10. Otherwise, I can't think of how to teach them how to calculate the conversion relationship of various musical notes.

Finally, learning a musical instrument requires practicing every day, and some of the exercises are indeed quite boring. Obviously, the younger the children, the harder it is to persist.

To sum up, frankly speaking, from what I have seen, it is really impossible for a 2-year-old and 9-month-old to learn drums. It is recommended to wait until you are 5 years old to watch.

In addition, I strongly do not recommend that you go to that training institution again. It is true that you can learn percussion early, take Orff and other courses, hit the triangle and shake the maracas, this is also percussion. But it’s really not good if the drum set is too early. My child has changed training institutions. When I contacted the current institution, the teacher heard that my child was under 5 years old and tried his best to persuade me to wait. And like the training institution you went to, if someone can say that he can learn drums at 2 years and 9 months old, it means that they only care about making money. Everyone wants to make money, but it is wrong to just make money. It is estimated that the main purpose of the course content is to get you to buy more class hours.

Finally, let me give you another example. My child’s current teacher is a graduate of the Central Conservatory of Music. His child is almost 4 years old. He said that he didn't teach anything and now he was just waiting for his children to grow up.