[adriand]

This also tends to be my view because improvisation is what I enjoy doing musically the most, but my daughter (12 yo) takes piano lessons which are quite typical in their structure (Conservatory) and has no interest in improvisation, and in fact, has resisted my attempts to get her to try it. She's obsessed with classical music and practices all the time with no prompting (and is now able to play quite beautifully), so of course, I haven't continued trying to change what she's doing.

Perhaps what are needed are methods to determine the approach that will work best with a given child.

[pclmulqdq]

I disagree with you, and I think that if your daughter has found something she likes doing with the instrument, you should encourage that, even if it's not what you wanted or expected.

As a child who loved classical music, I hated getting comments from my relatives that I should play them some rock or jazz. I just wanted to do my own thing. Honestly, it's also a very different style of playing - I later learned some jazz piano (to appease them) and it's less demanding on your fine motor control ("tone color") and more about playing precisely on beat, which I found a lot less fun.

[nerdponx]

I think you misread the parent post. They said that they stopped trying to encourage their daughter to improvise, because she took naturally to classical music and doesn't seem to care about improvisation.