How many times can a parent cross the same boundary before the lessons are over?

Listen, I’m with the piano teacher here. There was some debate about whether what she did was the right call or not, but I’m sure she did the correct thing in this situation. Let me give you some more background…

This music teacher had been teaching a 9-year-old little girl who was smart and learnt fast. She was talented and seemed very interested in the instrument. The first two months of lessons, things were going great between them, except for the girl’s mother, who started to record everything with her phone. At first, the teacher didn’t think much of it since maybe they just wanted to have some memories.

However, she came across those videos on social media with captions like ‘watch how she does this trick at once’, and tagging some music accounts to make her go viral. The mother wanted her daughter to become a social-media star and music prodigy, and was posting every single thing that happened during the different lessons. Needless to say, the teacher was very upset.

When the girl came back, she politely asked the mother not to record since she didn’t feel comfortable, and she was not okay with being online without her consent. She started to argue and tried to tell her that the videos were for the family to see, and that account had already a bunch of followers who wanted to see how the girl progressed.

During the following lessons, she had to interrupt because she noticed the woman filming, and even told her that if she saw the phone one more time, she was going to cancel the lessons. Of course, the mother tried to record once again, so the teacher told her not to come back since she couldn’t trust them to comply with a single boundary. 

The mother was very upset and told her that the only one who was being punished was the innocent child, who was talented and loved the piano lessons. But if you ask me, the mother made her daughter lose the chance of becoming good at piano because of her greed.