problems with a beginner guitar student - need help

Hi guitaraddict,wow I really do not know what too say as I am not a teacher just a picker and a strummer.She sounds really smart for right now you might just keep her on chords. I think you should also get her to practice scales. Is she Left handed? She may be trying too hard. The guitar can be the easiest or the hardest of all to play and it takes a lot of time for some of us.  We have some good people here that have taught and performed pro,I hope they will check out your post. Welcome too chordie.

It almost sounds as if she may be dyslexic.  She has trouble with string order and where to put her fingers.  This would follow for tones and sounds as well.  She sees and hears differently from you and I. Look up some simple tests for dyslexia and see if you can tell whether that's it or not.

Yeah, I'm thinking of leaving all the theory to the side. She progressed pretty fast though. We started with having fun when playing, we often played together at lessons as fast as she got a handle of strumming and playing some basic chords (like A, G, D, E..) She really has no problem with down up, up down strumming patterns, changing rhythm, muting strings with her strumming hand and learning new chords (if they aren't barre chords though). She learned all the basic open 7th chords, minor7 chords, major chords, minor chords and open sus chords (sus2, sus4).
She has some trouble with barre chords, but only because she doesn't really understand which tone is the starting tone of the barre (with G major barre chord, first finger is on the third fret on the low E string, which is G tone - she doesn't really remember that, and many times also places it to G#, or even F#, we are really training this still). She can hold them pretty well, her guitar hold is fine, she isn't pressing too hard and has no problems with painful fingers if she doesn't play them for too long (I told her not too, even when she wants, because it can be painful then until the hands are well used to playing for a long time).

So we did a couple of songs (from rock, to pop, to easier country, to rock'n'roll, and as her daughter is 16 years old and quite good singer, she has many options to play the songs. Sometimes I join in too. When I asked her if she wants to just go on with strumming, and chords, she said yeah, but that she also wants to learn some theory, she wants to become good fingerpicker one day and wants to be able to read tabs. She is totally amazed when she sees anyone play that way. So that's why I started showing her some theory (around 4 months ago, but not in every lesson, it's like every second, or third, to not annoy her too much with that), and what the tones are. She said she also wants to be able to play some easier solo once and that she would want to understand guitar well someday.

Yeah, she told me that she was a lefty when little, but had to change the hand for right one when she started school (teachers wanted all students to write with right hand at her primary school). So she can really write and function with both hands, and she started with guitar as right-handed, beucause she wanted to learn it "normal way" and she didn't really tell me she was lefty once until we started with theory. But now she is very good strummer for her level (9 months). She can strumm both with a pick and without but has some trouble with proper finger placements without a pick if we don't take it really slowly, step-by-step, because she can't just read a tab and play what is written if it's a "normal" tab.

I have tought of her having some minor learning problems (she has some trouble differentiating left and right in ordinary things, but can work around it, she reads words as a picture of the word, not by letters, she has some minor memory problems if it's not visually supported..), but was never diagnosed with anything, or unrecognized, as it was a long time ago when she went to school and learned by visual memory. Otherwise she can tune her own guitar with a tuner very well, she knows that on 12th fret all the tones repeat (EADGBE), she can sing in pitch with no problems and has good sense of rhythm. She is otherwise very creative, has good intuition, her logic (if not for music theory) is quite good in ordinary things (she said so), she loves to write her own songs (chords and lyrics), she showed me some and they are guite innovative, she loves changing strumming patterns within a song, she knows how to play quiet (piano), loud (forte), etc., and appropriately changes it within songs.

I started to teach her theory around four months ago, because basically she asked me to, but is facing problems with that. We usually have a 60 min lesson, and if we're not working on theory, there is just a couple of minutes of explanation, and the other is having fun and playing, so I'd not think that too little fun is the problem. With theory is around 30 min explanation, 30 min of practice, flexible though).

I'll also look up if she might be dyslexic or something, but she was otherwise said as being gifted.

Obviously we are all guessing because we don't know her. But I'm thinking some sort of learning issue also.

I don't know about everyone else, but I don't know tones and such. I know very few notes on the fretboard. I only know my chords by shape. So 5 years in, for me anyway, theory doesn't come up alot.

Yeah, as I saw on the internet, she really has some problems that seem like dyslexia, but I guess she somehow figured to read well, like through pictures of the words or something, because now she is quite fast and fluent reader (though she usually reads quietly, and rarely loud). If there is a word "number" she will remember it by shape, like "number" and connect it with numbers, but she never read like "n-u-m-b-e-r". But with every new language she wants to learn, she has quite a bit of a problem learning correct pronunciation and often misspells it and mixes letters here and there. She also has very messy handwriting that no one can read really, even herself sometimes. I find it strange she was never assessed for any learning problems, while she clearly shows some difficulties in some areas, including time management and disorganization (forgets things often, and often asks the same question, like how much should she practice a day and such).

I made and gave her some very basic tab last week and asked her to try it (it is mostly open strings, and fingers 1, 2, and occasionally 3, on just low E string and it's not long). I asked her to try and then tell me how it goes. She said she still has to turn it around in her head to see it the right way (as in her head somehow low E string is placed below, and high strings are upper strings). That the lines look all the same and the numbers all get jumbled somehow. She said it's the same problem with classical notation. She sees the notes, but doesn't differentiate fast enough between all those lines and spaces and then like something in her head stops and she can't figure out what the tones are and becomes utterly confused.  Though she can find all the keys on the piano by visual memory.
Then I asked her to put a guitar on her knees like she would play the piano, to put her notebook with a tab on guitar, and the strings will be in the same order visually as on the tab. Then when she sees number 3, she has to put her finger on the third fret of the string that matches the one on the tab.  Guess what, when she called me today afternoon, she said she could finally find the appropriate frets and strings and could play it! Now, she would just have to convert it somehow to normal guitar hold and find the same thing when holding guitar normally after few tries. I hope she could do it somehow.

Gidday

All i can say if she can do all the things you mentioned,i think she is brilliant.
Only 9 mths amazing!