Children and Music : Benefits of Music in Child Development

As we all know, music is a big part of our lives. Through centuries, singing and music play has had an extremely important role in our culture. You will find music everywhere you go. From movies, television, your mobile ringtone, celebrations, and even in the airport bathrooms.  Music is one of the greatest tools for better learning, self-development, relaxation, or just simply a way to express yourself.

From the first moment in our life, when we get upset and start crying, parents have a natural instinct to south our cries with singing, which is also a way to express their love or just to interact.  What if parents knew exactly how to use that music to impact child development, their behavior, and to help improve social skills for kids at all ages.  Most of the small children love listening or singing along the music they hear. A group of scientists took a particular interest in this topic and did a study that shows how rich musical growing environment can help your child mental and musical development.

When we consider the importance of sound and music as it is, it is not a surprise that there are many studies as this one, most of them focused on the early childhood development.

Effect of Music on Early Childhood Development

As we already mentioned, music can play a key role in the raising of our children. There are two simple facts that we all can agree about, the children do not experience music in the same way as adults and that the first six years of life are crucial for child’s musical and personal development. As you probably noticed, even the youngest toddlers show signs of understanding of melody, frequency, and stimuli. In these early years of childhood, we learn the tones of music and make our own mental system that starts memorizing the music.

This process mostly consists out of memorizing and imitating tones of familiar songs by just simply clapping to a beat or singing. In this period it is a good time for a parent to explore and influence on their child. Of course, there are both positive and negative factors that can affect the ability to develop skills in that time of life. It is necessary to create a stimulation and create an environment where there is exposure to music and music play in order to help your child change their potential into a complete musical growth. As a parent, you can make a big step for your child’s further decisions.

Playing and Listening Music

We talked about how listening to the songs can affect our early mental growth, but what about playing music? There is evergreen question revolving around effects of music on our intelligence, which lead to another study that was focused on how playing a musical instrument can actually impact on our intelligence.  This research leads to conclusions that playing a musical instrument, whether the violin, the drums or piano could help your child achieve better results in their school projects. This is probably the reason why so many parents send their children to musical schools.

The playing of a musical instrument can help your brain improve some motor skills and overall your intelligence. There is also one important thing to mention when it comes to this study. The children who have individual music lesson developed a better ability to resolve upcoming problems and use logic when it’s needed. This mostly affects our awareness of how to use things around us, and how to solve any issues you might have.

Music in Different Childhood Ages

We all sometimes or most of the times express us through music, while children do it all the time. Do you remember whistling unknown tunes to yourself while playing, or have you seen a child do that? In early years, we start by singing and inventing our own song, later we learn to sing together as a group, then comes the playing of a musical instrument. When we come into certain age, we develop a certain kind of music taste, that gives us our favorite band, and we use that music to create our groups and find friends. Depending on age, music has a different impact on children. Let us start with infants.

Babies, as you probably already notice first recognize the melody of a song, even though they have no clue what the words are. Most of the infants start dancing to the music and try to replicate the sound they hear. For this reason, soothing music is mostly a perfect choice for a bedtime. On the other hand, if you play a too load music to your child, it can make an opposite effect. By music learning, you can teach your child how it supposed to feel when it bathing, eating or sleeping time.

When your child grows up a little, it starts expressing its love for music through dancing. Toddlers tend to laugh to silly songs, which is why is a good choice to replace the words in the familiar tunes and make them funny. They will try to replicate the song by tapping or clapping.

After your child becomes preschooler, it will sing just for the sake of singing. They don’t care if they are a good singers or not, it’s all about making noise. In this period of their lives, children repeat words and melodies they hear. They like those children songs about things they understand and recognize, like toys and animals.

Then comes a period of books and school. You are preordered to listen to counted, spelled and memorized by heart poems and song. When they come into this age, children start showing their taste in music, and by that also an interest in music education. This is a perfect period to send them to music lessons or teach they play an instrument.

Last but not the least, is the every parent’s nightmare or so-called teenage period. Teenagers use music as a tool to make friendships, have fun and set themselves apart from their parents. They identify with a certain music group and some of them start making bands in the basement or garage. Listening to a certain kind of bands can place you into the cool and uncool group. This gives music a huge power that can determine some of our life choices.

In overall, music is definitely something that makes the world go around. Most of all, it a powerful way to communicate with your child and help it develop and form their own personalities. If you are patient enough, you can give your child a chance to improve its intelligence, motor skills and even develop musical sense. It is definitely a good way to raise your child.