Most children do not wake up wanting to practise. That is completely normal. Families who manage regular practice usually do not rely on motivation. They rely on routine. Here are five habits that make practice easier for everyone.

1. Same time, same place

Habits form when an action is tied to a regular cue. In a well-known study led by Phillippa Lally at University College London, people chose a daily behaviour and tracked how automatic it felt. On average it took 66 days to feel automatic, but Dr Lally has since explained, in an interview with the University of Surrey, that the range was huge, from 18 to 254 days. The UCL team also found that missing a single day did not meaningfully set people back. Her practical advice is to "make a clear plan of when and where you will do something".

For music, that might mean practice straight after the after-school snack, before screens, or just after dinner. Keep the instrument somewhere safe but easy to reach: guitar on a stand, piano lid open, book on the music desk. If a day is missed, simply pick it up again tomorrow.

2. One clear, small goal

"Practise your piece" is vague. "Play bars 5 to 8 with the right fingering, three times in a row" is a goal a child can actually reach. Before starting, ask your child to choose one target from the teacher's notes. Finishing a small goal feels good, and that feeling helps bring them back tomorrow.

3. Slow practice

Children often want to play everything at full speed. Research by Robert Duke and colleagues at the University of Texas at Austin, summarised by the UK music education body Music Mark, observed advanced pianists practising a difficult passage. The strongest players pinpointed exactly where errors happened, fixed them straight away, slowed down deliberately for the hard parts and repeated the passage until the error stopped coming back. The summary picks out strategic slowing down as the most impactful strategy. The study was small and involved university students, but the message suits learners of any age: slow and correct beats fast and messy.

4. The tempo ladder

A tempo ladder is a simple way to build speed without losing accuracy. It is a teacher's technique rather than a research finding, but it puts slow practice into action.

• Set a metronome to a speed where the tricky passage feels easy.
• Play it correctly, ideally two or three times in a row.
• Move the metronome up one small step and repeat.
• If mistakes creep in, step back down a rung.
• Write down today's top speed so tomorrow starts from there.

Children often enjoy watching the number climb across the week. Music-Ready's practice tools at free practice tools can help you keep it simple.

5. Praise the effort, not the talent

How we praise matters. In a classic set of studies published in 1998, Claudia Mueller and Carol Dweck found that children aged around 9 to 12 who were praised for being clever were less willing to persist, and enjoyed tasks less, after a setback than children praised for their effort. Those studies used problem-solving tasks rather than music, so treat this as a helpful nudge rather than a rule.

In everyday practice, try comments that name what your child actually did:

• "You slowed down for the hard bit. That really helped."
• "You kept going after that mistake."
• "Those three bars sound smoother than yesterday."

Keep it light

None of these habits needs to be perfect. A short, regular, focused session with a kind word at the end will do more over a term than the occasional marathon. If something is not working, talk to your child's teacher. They will have seen it before and can usually suggest a small change that makes a big difference.