As we spoke about last night but I thought I'd add here, because of my goals when I first started learning to play piano I've ended up with a different set of playing skills than is usually thought. I feel my way through playing, knowing and understanding the chords, modes, progressions, etc, in such a way that I can sit down and play a piano without knowing what I'm going to play until it comes out. Improvising and playing by ear comes quite easily for me. On the other hand, I have quite a bit of trouble sight-reading or playing a piece exactly how it is written (for more difficult pieces, anyway).

My niece is learning to play piano and I suspect she has a good teacher because she's landing somewhere in the middle. My only concern is that she doesn't seem able to come up with her own tunes or melodies, something that I started doing very early on. I'm hoping that with a little influence from me she'll become a little more creative as her skills improve.