I might consider home-ed if his behaviour doesn't improve but I'm not sure he could get such an extensive singing education, which really helps his music, if it is not attached to a choir school.

DS came home today and told me that he is now not sitting G1 piano but G2 and only after 2nd lesson with new teacher and 9 lessons in total in 5 months! I am now in the process of trying to talk him out of the bassoon and double bass exam because this is getting ridiculous! I do feel a tad proud though!

I meant to add that I did home-ed both boys when they were younger so it is not an alien concept. My big concern is that his social skills are already pretty weak though and taking him out of school may not help. We'll see.

Nooooooooo! Don't even think of pulling him out of choir school - it will be doing sooo much for his general musical development. You couldn't hope to replace that, no matter how much practice he fits in at home.

There comes a point where it is not worth sitting lots of exams at the same level on different instruments because there is a lot of duplication of skills eg sight-reading and aural and I think you get diminishing returns because it ceases to be a learning experience. By all means go for all the grade 8s eventually, but do you really want to pay for 3 lots of grade 3, for example. It sounds as though you need to talk to his the different teachers and sort out a plan so that you don't keep ending up in the same situation every term with multiple exams being suggested. Why not impose a maximum of say one exam per instrument per year. He can always skip grades if necessary or you could agree to schedule exams at sensible times eg in the run-up to scholarship application so that he has recent results to submit.

You can actually capitalise on the fact that so much of the exam material is overlapping, I think - and okay, sightreading skills need to be developed for each intervals, but the reading-music bit of that remains pretty transferrable.

I'm with those who say - in the event of keeping everything going, rotate. I got LGSMD on really not that many hours' practice a week (I've posted this before, and by now, with the exam about two years and a bit ago, I'm likely to start exaggerating actual amounts - but certainly I was doing less than an hour a day on average, and definitely not practising every day for much of the build up time) - and did it by being efficient with practice. Also, a wee break now and again actually helps my brain to sort out gremlins away from the instrument. I do think that the idea of a session immediately after, or directly the day after a lesson is a good one, but every day? Not inevitably necessary at all.

I can't even begin to contemplate early rising for practice, but since your son can, yes, I'd try capitalising on it as suggested, and I'd also have thought that half an hour later to bed wouldn't be unduly stressful - but although having a predictable timetable might be good if there is a tendency towards ADHD, too much rigidity will both cause stress and leave absolutely no room for those spontaneous social events which our kids also need to develop well socially.

It's not the end of the world to miss an occasional practice session. A crammed life may make it necessary to do that, and there are benefits to having other activities interspersed with our routine.

I agree to!

My slight problem though is that he sits the pre-test for you know where in October and it would have been good for the report to state that he was x,y and z on these instruments.

Oh and I will make sure DS stays at that school if I lose my hair and teeth in the process. He's already made me go grey!

Nah. It's called silver, and it's Distinguished-looking . I should know....