Significance of Having a Home Practice Program
To see the evidence regarding the efficacy of home practice programming from scientific literature, see the article titled “Literature Supporting TherapyForte’s Practice Model for an Evidence Based Practice.”
Repetitions, training, exercises, homework, drills. These are all forms of practicing. Practice and doing repetition outside of structured sessions are the keys to developing a new habit or learning a skill. We’ve discussed the similarities between school, learning piano, and occupational therapy in the “Analogs” article. All three of these contexts take advantage of some form of a home program to maximize a child’s learning and promote progress in a timely matter.
There are three parts to a home program
1) During the session or class, the instructor (school teacher, piano teacher, occupational therapist) picks a specific set of activities or exercises designed to develop the child’s skill. The child completes the exercises with the instructor during the session and learns what the expectations are. The instructor assigns these same exercises/activities for the child to work on as part of their Home Practice Program
2) The child carries out the Home Practice Program activities at home, independently or with adult supervision/facilitation as needed/recommended.
3) At the following session, the child demonstrates their ability to complete the activity. The instructor evaluates the client’s competency level and modifies the Home Practice Program to promote further development of the skill being targeted.
In the context of a school lessons, teachers assign homework tasks to complete outside of classes. Music teachers assign specific pieces (or segments of pieces) to practice outside of lessons. Occupational therapists assign a custom home exercise program to complete outside of therapy sessions.
You may have heard that it takes 66 days for form a habit. That was the conclusion of a study by Lally, Van Jaarsveld, Potts, & Wardle (2010). In the study, participants were instructed to choose one eating/drinking activity, or some other behavior to perform daily for a duration of 12 weeks. What they found was that it takes anywhere from 18 to 254 days to develop a conscious habit into an automatic one. The median of that range was 66 days.
Thus, it was concluded that the number of consistent repetitions it takes to learn a behavior is 66. It is possible that the learning process could be expedited by doing more repetitions (within reason) to reach 66 repetitions sooner. Let’s apply this to a child learning a behavior in the contexts of school, piano and occupational therapy.
It is important for most children to learn how to print-write letters and numbers. Writing letters/numbers correctly (top to bottom, left to right) is a skill that is learned in the classroom while writing them legibly is a habit that must be practiced. When a child first starts writing, there are a lot of visual factors that are “off”. Letters are typically incorrectly sized, oriented or placed in elevation relative to the guide lines. If a child did not practice printing outside of the classroom by completing structured assignments (such as tracing worksheets), it would take them significantly longer to print letters and numbers correctly without prompting from an adult.
Let’s say that Mary writes 5 sets once a week during language arts in class. Mary would only get 5 reps that week with a significant length of time (6 days) where memory and awareness of how to perform the skill atrophies until it is nearly forgotten by language arts class the next week. It would take Mary 13.5 weeks to learn how to print correctly IF she only did it in class. Now let’s say that Mary does 5 sets during language arts class once a week, one worksheet for homework every night and on the weekends. By doing homework, Mary increases her number of weekly repetitions to 12. Now it takes Mary only 5.5 weeks to learn how to print numbers and letters. That’s quite an advancement in the amount of time it takes her to learn a useful skill that support her ability to complete more advanced academic demands later.
It is important for a piano student to learn the proper finger sequence to play a one octave C major scale, and practice with the learned sequence at home. If the student only practices in class with the teacher but does not practice at home between lessons, the strength of the skill fades. Worse yet, if the student practices with incorrect sequencing, they develop a bad habit that requires effort to correct. Ideally a piano student would practice the scale (in a manner identical to which they learned during class) several times a day, consistently throughout the week, so that they become competent by the next class. After the student demonstrates that they can competently play a 1 octave C major scale during class, the teacher may add on and increase the difficulty but upgrading the C major scale to 2 octaves. Then, the student is sent home up with an updated home program to practice 2 octave C major scales.
Most parents would agree getting dressed independently is an important skill for their child to master. One of the most difficult activities of getting dressed is correctly donning and doffing shoes (putting on and taking off) especially once distinct sides (left/right) and fasteners are involved. Typically, the only time a child fully puts on their shoes by themselves is during session with the therapist. During the rest of the week, the parent(s) put the child’s shoes on for them, often in the interest of saving time which is understandable. However, if a kid only gets to practice with their occupational therapist once a week, the mere handful of repetitions they get is not enough for them to learn how to do it for themselves competently. The child needs to be given the time and space to do it for themselves on a consistent basis.
In conclusion, whether it’s a school subject, a musical instrument or an activity of daily living, a child needs to have consistent practice to learn a skill to the point that they can perform it automatically or independently. Merely relying on the repetitions that your child gets in class or in session is typically not enough to achieve satisfactory results in a timely manner.
Sources
Lally, P., Van Jaarsveld, C. H., Potts, H. W., & Wardle, J. (2010). How are habits formed: Modelling habit formation in the real world. European journal of social psychology, 40(6), 998-1009.