I have a 6 year old piano student who previously had some lessons in Mexico.
I think it was a Yamaha school and he seems to have done some general music thorugh singing as part of the piano class. His mother tells me she was expected to take an active part in his learning and practice.
It is something in the region of 6-12 month since he was there.

I've begun with an off stave starter, partly to save having to think about note names yet.
It appears that they use the fixed doh as he will sing and play 5 finger tunes to doh, re, mi etc. though he doesn't really remember which note is doh.
He has a quite a good aural awareness of these first 5 notes too.

In the next couple of weeks we will be moving on to white notes and letter names.
Any ideas for getting through the change to letter names? Maybe I just don't make a big thing of it but use letter names myself and don't actively discourage him from his fixed doh in the belief that the change will just happen? There will be no introduction of staff notation for a few weeks.
Any reason why I should?.......... My own thoughts are that yes, I should because this is how he will be understood by other players in this country and also (weaker argument?) this is how all the tutor books are written.

Hope this makes some sense... thanks for reading and any suggestions welcome.

My inclination would be the same as yours, to proceed with learning the names of the notes using the convention we have here, as that's where he is now, and where all his study materials will come from.

I'd probably gently reinforce the letter names each time he uses the solfa ones, particularly as you say he's not always sure which one is doh, and I would be open about the fact that people in the UK use the letter names instead - after all, what he's learned before isn't wrong, it's just different.

It will probably be easier than you think. I have been teaching in France for several years now and at the beginning I wondered what to do about this problem. I felt I had to use the fixed doh names because that is what the pupils would meet in school and with any French music teacher. On the other hand I didn't want to use French tutor books as I found them horrendous. They move at an amazing speed and are full of horrid exercises and don't build repertoire.

So I use English or American methods and I quite simply excplain to the children the difference in the way we name notes. Actually they would all prefer to use letter names because it is so much easier. However I teach using do ré mi fa sol la si do because as I said they will meet this elsewhere. But they see the theory exercises in ABCDEFG and often those who also do guitar (with a French teacher) see the chords labelled as G major, E minor etc. My children use the AB theory books and after quite a short time they say I needn't translate the letter names in the instructions because they know them. They just pick them up.

I have also found that the explanations in English are not much problem. I write a brief French equivalent on the page. Some of the children in any case like to get a bit of English practice on the side. If you just take it steadily and give time for the new names to sink in I don't think it will be a problem. A six year old will find it easy enough to adapt - linguists tell us that the earlier they start to use different languages the better.

I taught in Yamaha Music Schools for several years and have had experience of teaching solfege and converting students to usual note names. I wouldn't be too quick to reject solfege for the moment. I've found that children aged 6 or thereabouts respond well to it, and if you sing with them, can develop strong aural skills. The solfege note names sound more individual than the letter names, many of which end in the sound 'ee'!

When converting to note names, I would suggest you do short drills of say 3 notes, singing solfege first and then repeating the same 3 note with letter names. Also you can think up some fun games. It will probably be a good idea to repeat drills and activities for several weeks before actually getting the student to learn a whole piece with the new note names.

Ive just realised that there might be a bit of confusion. I thought, coming from Mexico the child would have learnt fixed solfa names for fixed pitch. but I get the impression from what LizzieT is saying that she thinks the pupil has been using solfa - ie movable solfa names.

Do you know which it is sbhoa? If it's movable solfa then the remarks in my last post wouldn't be of much help. The two systems use the same names but for quite different purposes.

I'm pretty sure it's fixed.
I realised that LizzieT was probably refering to moveable doh.

A few questions:
Are he and his mother native English or Spanish speakers?
Did his mother play an instrument prior to getting involved with her son's learning and if she did what language did she learn it in?

If he is bilingual then he will be used to things being different in different languages and shouldn't have a problem with you saying that this is what they're called in English. If he has not been learning for very long it should not be too hard for him to lean the English names.

Personally I have found it very hard to get used to the fixed doh system (but I think that is because I have played for so long that the letter names are so profoundly anchored). This leads me to say that it may be harder for the mother than for him. I have made an effort to use the French terms with my daughter but I don't always get them right and sometimes confuse her by saying the wrong thing.

The mother is a native Spanish speaker, I'm not sure about the boy but they do seem to use spanish at home at least some of the time because she often gives him instructions in spanish.
As far as I can tell from the questions she asks the mother has never played an instrument.

Thanks for the suggestions so far, they mostly confirm my own ideas on this which is useful.
Any other thoughts and suggestions are very welcome.

No - I was referring to fixed pitches. That's what I assume this student would have been learning.

I suggest you write letter names and important "words" down for the mother (note value names, sharp, flat etc.) even things that might seem obvious to you like a "rest" - it has taken me four years to figure out that "soupir" and "pause" are actually indicative of the length of the rest and not just synonyms for a rest in general.

With my daughter we have these weird mixed up conversations with things like "you need to do the doh lié to the fa." "Which note should I shift up to quatrième position in?" "Was the bow supposed to be poussé or tiré?"