Sometime during the mid-1970's a gentleman brought his 6 year old son to me for guitar lessons. I wasn't just reluctant, I flat out refused at first. I had never taught anyone that young before and was worried that I would do more harm than good. He was insistent, however, so I agreed. I had one condition though. If I was not successful, the blame had to fall directly on me, not the child.
I wish there was a Hollywood type ending, but the sad reality was that after a year the child quit. But during that year, and the years that followed, more young children came to me for lessons. I very quickly learned that the available methods and materials were not age appropriate. So I did some research and wrote my own. It took a while but I got the hang of it and I've been successfully teaching very young children for a long time.
Most of my friends who teach guitar teach electric guitar. In various conversations I would hear them say they had some young students who played this song, or that lead line, just like Hendrix, or Page, or - well you get the idea. The student and the teacher would listen to a recording repeatedly and then figure out what was being done. My students, however, had to play straight from the page with no idea of what the music sounded like. They had a much more difficult time of it.
So I set out to correct that and spent the next few years making reference recordings of the music they were learning so they could listen and copy. Technology jumped into the middle of the process and soon I was simply playing the song into their cell phones and there was no need for them to buy a CD of me playing their music.
Four years ago a young student was going to be spending a large part of her summer visiting her grandparents out of state. She didn't want to miss that many guitar lessons so her mother suggested we meet online via video chat. She had to teach me how to do it because it was all very new to me. The experiment worked and I quickly adopted it for make-up lessons. But a year later I had a full-time long distant student and that expanded the possibilities.
I now have several online students ranging in age from 15 to early 70s. The technology is not without its problems and can become very aggravating at times, but it's improving and I'm trying to get better. I now have the possibility of a 7 year old online student. Up until a couple of days ago I was worried that I would not be able to explain things to her efficiently. But I figured out a new program and I'm quite confident that we have the potential for success.
My career has been greatly influenced by the desire of very young children to play guitar and my fear of letting them down. I would like to say that I have the foresight to do all of this, but it's actually the children who push me into it. It would be easy to make excuses and say NO. But it's way more fun to address the problem and find solutions. However I may have to teach well into the 22nd century to get it all figured out.