But this is actually one big truth! My friend was preparing her piano master’s thesis while being pregnant. She practiced every day. When her girl was born, after several years she sat at a piano and without much effort, she started playing a concert tune she “listened” while she was in her mother’s stomach. Actually, the most beautiful music for baby’s ears is mom’s laughter. And if mom sings, and does so every day, the baby could not be any happier.

Many people think they will completely guide their children towards music if they enroll them in music school. There is truth to that, but only as long as the child looks forward to going to classes. However, I have experienced firsthand (and I still hear my students say this) that sometimes it is hard to go to classes. This is not about not practicing. It’s simply that some teachers and some children “do not click” when working together. That’s when the lessons become torture. I believe that in life, we should run towards anything that makes us happy and that learning should be a pleasure. As soon as we start resisting, all the beauty and joy vanishes.

Imagine having to create music, and doing so under pressure. How much energy and time does it take to create something beautiful from something not so beautiful?

This is why, if you notice your child has an actual problem with their teacher, put them into another teacher’s class. The worst thing you can do is say: “Tough it out for just two more years, and then you don’t have to go to music high school!” Imagine saying that to someone who lives for music, who sees themselves on the global scene and who wants to share the music of their heart with the world. Should they really tough something out? Not two years, not a second!

Truth is, there are children putting up a fight against it because they want to pursue something else. I think the best thing to do, in that case, is to listen to what they want. These children can go from one professor to another, never achieving anything. Perhaps they are born to be painters, poets, actors, mathematicians, biologists, or athletes. If that is so, I do not see why they should “tough out” anything. For them, taking music lessons becomes some sort of punishment.

Hence, you should talk to your children, and avoid using phrases such as “You are still young, what do you know, I know what’s best for you!” Children do know – they have an unerring instinct.

Copyright: Fh Photo

I want to share with you a story about how I felt when I first started attending music school. It all started in 1968 when my dad and the workers were taking our family piano all the way up to the sixth floor. He thought my sister would be thrilled to take musing lessons. However, that did not happen and the piano soon became just another piece of our furniture. My mom suggested selling it. Although “I was not part of the plan” back then, my dad was adamantly against the idea, saying someday someone will be in a desperate need for the piano. As if he knew.

However, at the very beginning, even I was not interested in music school. I was into basketball, getting ready to take no. 1 place in the world of sport. My mom used to say they should have sold the piano, my dad said that my craze for basketball would be over in a few years’ time, while I was doing my own thing. They constantly switched me from one class to another, for piano teachers did not want to teach a child refusing to practice at home, but was keener on reading musical notes on paper at the sport during the piano lesson. I was devoted to taking all my exams and was even more devoted to getting on my teachers’ nerves. I was eager for my parents to withdraw me from the music school.

However, for some reasons, the basketball had to become a thing of the past back then. So? What am I to do now? I decided to enroll in a music high school and ask to be transferred to take lessons with the best piano teacher. The principal was confused. I, who was not interested at all into the piano and practicing, want to take lessons with the best piano teacher? Still, he was willing to be helpful. And he was not wrong.

All of a sudden, the piano and I started to “breathe together”.

My piano lessons involved singing, laughter and joy. I kept my focus and did my best to become the best possible friend to music. It was not until 1990 that our family piano started to be played the way it was supposed to. It was waiting for 22 long years. I do not know if it paid off for the piano, but I cannot be more grateful to it. I can only imagine how the piano must have felt while I was struggling to hit the right tone. It probably thought: “My god, child, leave me alone!”  Support your children to never give up easily from beautiful things in life. They should be persistent. When they complain that something is boring or hard for them, tell them to give it a new meaning, to refresh it, stir it up and unwind. You will see, it will be magical.

Children are the most honest and most open human beings. You can “pour in” them various beautiful things. Be their joy and their most beautiful music. It does not matter if you have a good singing voice, as long as your song is played with a smile on your face and the melody comes from your heart. How easy it is to be music for a child, if we open the door for them with love, and see them in and out with a smile.

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Whether your child is the next Beyonce or is more likely to sing its solos in the shower, it is bound to benefit from some form of music education. Research has shown that learning the do-re-mis can help children excel in ways beyond the basic ABCs.

More than Just Music

Research has found that learning music facilitates learning other things and enhances skills that children inevitably use in other areas.  Mary Luehrisen, executive director of National Association of Music Merchants (NAMM) Foundation, a not-for-profit association that promotes benefits of making music, says:

A music-rich experience of singing, listening and moving is bringing very significant benefits to children as they progress into more formal ways of learning.

Making music involves more than just singing or playing the instruments; a child learning about music has to simultaneously tap into multiple skill sets. For instance, people use their ears and eyes, as well as large and small muscles; says Kenneth Guilmartin, the cofounder of Music Together, an early childhood music development program for infants in kindergarteners that involves parents or caregivers in the classes.

Learning music supports all learning. It is not that Mozart makes you smarter, but it provides you with very integrating and stimulating fun time or activity – Guilmartin says.

Language Development

When you observe children ages two to nine, one of the breakthroughs in that area is how music benefits their language development, which is important at that stage – says Luehrisen.

Children come into the world ready to decode sounds and words, and music education helps them enhance those natural abilities. She says that growing up in a musically rich environment is often advantageous for children’s language development. But Luehrisen adds that those inborn capacities need to be reinforced, practiced, and celebrated, which can be done at home or in a more formal music education setting.

According to the Children’s Music Workshop, the effects of music education on language development can be seen in the brain. “Recent studies have clearly indicated that musical training physically develops the part of the left side of the brain known to be involved with processing the language, and can actually wire the brain’s circuits in specific ways. Linking familiar songs to new information can also help imprint information on young minds,” the group claims.

This relationship between music and language development is socially advantageous to young children. Dr. Kyle Pruett, clinical professor of child psychiatry at Yale School of Medicine and a practicing musician, says:

The development of language over time tends to enhance parts of the brain that help process music.  Language competence is at the root of social competence. Musical experience strengthens the capacity to be verbally competent.

Increased IQ

A study by E. Glenn Schellenberg at the University of Toronto at Mississauga, published in a 2004 issue of Psychological Science, found a small increase in the IQs of six-year-olds who were given weekly voice and piano lessons. Schellenberg provided nine months of piano and voice lessons for a dozen six-year-olds, drama lessons (to see if exposure to arts in general versus just music had an effect) to a second group of six-year-olds, and no lessons to a third group. The children’s IQ was tested before entering the first grade, then again before entering the second grade.

Surprisingly, the children who were given music lessons over the school year had averagely scored higher on the test by three IQ points than the other two groups. The drama group didn’t have the same increase in IQ, but did experience increased social behavior benefits that was not seen in the music-only group.

The Brain Works Harder

Research indicates the brain of a musician, even a young one, works differently than that of a non musician. Dr. Eric Rasmussen, the Chair of the Early Childhood Music Department at the Peabody Preparatory of The Johns Hopkins University, where he teaches a specialized music curriculum to children two months to nine years old, says:

There’s some good neuroscience research saying that children involved in music have larger growth of neural activity than people who are not in music training. When you’re a musician and you’re playing an instrument, you have to use more of your brain.

In fact, a study led by Ellen Winner, professor of psychology at Boston College, and Gottfried Schlaug, professor of neurology at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Harvard Medical School, found changes in brain images of the children who underwent 15 months of weekly music instruction and practice. The students in the study who had received music instruction improved in sound discrimination and fine motor tasks, and brain imaging showed changes to the networks in the brain associated with those abilities, according to the Dana Foundation, a private philanthropic organization that supports brain research.

Spatial-Temporal Skills

Research has also found a causal link between music and spatial intelligence, which means that understanding music can help children visualize various elements that should go together, like they would do when solving a math problem.

Pruett, who helped found the Performing Arts Medicine Association, explains:

We have some pretty good data that music instruction does reliably improve spatial-temporal skills in children over time.

These skills come into play when solving multi step problems one would encounter in architecture, engineering, math, art, gaming, and especially working with computers.

Improved Test Scores

A study published in 2007 by Christopher Johnson, professor of music education and music therapy at the University of Kansas, revealed that students in elementary schools with superior music education programs scored around 22 percent higher in English and 20 percent higher in math scores on standardized tests, compared to schools with low-quality music programs, regardless of socioeconomic disparities among the schools or school districts. Johnson compares the concentration that music training requires to the focus needed to perform well on a standardized test.

Aside from test score results, Johnson’s study highlights the positive effects of quality music education on a young child’s success. Luehrisen explains this psychological phenomenon in two sentences:

Schools that have rigorous programs and high-quality music and arts teachers probably have high-quality teachers in other areas. If you have an environment where there are a lot of people doing creative, smart, great things, joyful things, even people who aren’t doing that have a tendency to go up and do better.

And it doesn’t end there: along with better performance results on concentration-based tasks, music training can help with basic memory recall.  Pruett says:

Formal training in music is also associated with other cognitive strengths such as verbal recall proficiency. People who have had formal musical training tend to be pretty good at remembering verbal information stored in memory.

Being Musical

Music can improve your child’s abilities in learning and other non music tasks, but it’s important to understand that music does not make one smarter. As Pruett explains, many intrinsic benefits of music education include being disciplined, learning a skill, being a part of the music world, managing performance, being a part of something you can be proud of, and even struggling with a less than perfect teacher.

It’s important not to oversell how smart music can make you.  Music makes your kid interested and happy, and smart will come later. It enriches his or her appetite for things that bring  pleasure to you and your friends.

While parents may hope that enrolling their child in a music program will make it a better student, the primary reasons to provide your child with musical education should be to help them become more musical, to appreciate all aspects of music, and to respect the process of learning an instrument or learning how to sing, which is valuable on its own merit.  Rasmussen says:

There is a massive benefit from being musical that we don’t understand, but it’s up to the individual. Music is there for its own sake. The benefits of music education for me are about being musical and achieving a better understanding of yourself. The horizons are broader when you are involved in music. Your understanding of art and the world, as well as the ability to perceive and express yourself, are enhanced.

Source: www.pbs.org

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