THE IMPORTANCE OF MUSIC FOR YOUNG CHILDREN
I recently had occasion to question and research what is appropriate (or rather
inappropriate) music for toddlers. I didn’t find the exact answer I was looking
for, but I did find other fascinating information. Not much of the following is
original information. Unfortunately I do not have a strong musical background.
In our school we sing daily, play instruments and dance, and I play guitar a
little. We do this because we enjoy music, and because I subscribe to the Mozart
Effect. Studies suggest that developing a child’s musical ability may actually
improve the ability to learn and be successful at other disciplines, such as
language, math and science. I have CDs, of Mozart music with specific selections
that are conducive to strengthening the mind, and others for improving
creativity. My toddlers enjoy opera just as much as Old McDonald.
So beyond the fun, here is what is happening in the brain (adapted from an
article by Jennifer Chin). Babies brains are constantly building themselves by
forming new connections, or synapses, in response to the stimuli they receive.
The higher the number of these different types of connections it forms, the
better able the brain is to handle any new information it receives. In other
words, every time a very young child experiences something new, a new pathway
has been constructed that will be available the next time a similar stimulus
arises. One could say that a young child's brain is organizing itself for a
lifetime of learning.
In fact, a child's musical development seems to be very similar to language
development. It follows a predictable sequence and includes things like learning
to sing in tune and marching to a particular beat. One of the earliest and most
critical stages of this development is the "music babble" stage that occurs
during the first six years. Similar to "language babble" this is the time when
the brain is learning to make sense of and order the sounds of music. In other
words, the child is learning to make a mental picture of the music she hears in
her mind. That representation is called “audiation”. Just as the ability to have
a visual image of letters and words in her mind is essential to a child's
language development, audiation is critical to musical growth.
Also important to musical growth is the ability to participate in music through
singing and movement. It has been discovered that in order to develop skill in
singing, one must develop the singing voice in early childhood. If not, the
voice will not coincide with the person's ability to think tonally. In other
words, a person may be able to hear the finer points of a tune, but not be able
to sing it on her own. Unfortunately, studies show a steady decrease in the
ability to sing in kindergartners over the last 20 years, perhaps due to lack of
encouragement during those earlier years.
In order to audiate rhythm in their minds, children must experience it in their
bodies. If they don't learn to do this at an early age, it is much harder as
they get older. Most basic motor patterns develop before age 5 and are merely
strengthened after this age.
The most recent and highly publicized study on music and children is the one
done in 1997 by psychologist Frances Rauscher. She compared the spatial and
temporal reasoning ability (skills needed to be successful with science and
math) of three- and four-year-olds who had studied piano, with those who had
spent the same amount of time learning to use computers. At the end of the study
the piano students performed 34% better on spatial and temporal ability tests
than the computer students. According to Rauscher, this is because music is a
spatial task. It is one of the few art forms where the components are arranged
in space over time, requiring mental imagery and the ability to reason in
sequence. In addition, while you are engaging in music you are feeling, seeing,
and hearing it all at once. Rauscher's results suggest that by influencing the
brain's development with this type of training while children's brains are still
malleable, those children appear to be better equipped for other spatial and
temporal tasks later on.
According to Ken Guilmartin, founder of the Music Together program, "...although
children acquire information and learn skills from many sources, they develop
the essential disposition to learn only from the model of their primary
caregivers." Your child's genes may determine whether she is capable of winning
the Nobel peace prize, but your involvement in her musical development in the
early childhood years can help set her up for a lifetime of successes.
If, after reading this article, you are still left with specific question, you
are welcome to e-mail me at carolynnstoddlers@yahoo.com.