Bedtime Music

One of the easiest and most effective ways to expose young children to music is at bedtime. The lights are low, there is no distracting activity and the bedroom can be filled with beautiful music and the mind imagining all sorts of things.

Music listening can easily become a part of the bedtime ritual, and something which a child will look forward to with great expectation. CD players are priced very affordably and their sound quality is much better than the record players parents grew up with. The music can be set to play rather softly, and even at a soft level will be effective in covering up lots of distracting noises in the house which can keep children awake.

There are several ways to obtain bedtime music. Many sale-priced CDs with excellent music are available for as little as a dollar or two, but select only the labels with the DDD marking - some of these sale-priced discs without the DDD are recorded from very poor-quality vinyl LPs, and simply sound as bad as the scratchy albums they're made from. Discs or tapes given as gifts from family members and friends will remind the child of them while listening to the music, and reinforce the value the giver places on listening to music. There are lullaby discs available at most CD stores with peaceful music from around the world, in verbal languages your child may not understand, but sung and played using the universal language of music.

In our family, we went to the library with our first son and let him choose the albums he wanted to hear. Being 3 years old at the time, he chose them based on the pictures on the front! He got an earful of variety - music from around the world.

It is good to mix familiar music with some new and different music each night. When we used library recordings, we would listen to the new recordings for about a week each night so that some familiarity would be gained. At first hearing, one album of music from Africa startled my older son, then about 4 years old - since the music was so different from anything else he had ever heard, he thought the record player was broken, but later came to understand the wonderful drum rhythms he was hearing!

Occasionally I would stay in the room and listen to music with my sons. This was helpful especially when listening to instrumental pieces. I remember listening to Mussorgsky's "Pictures at an Exhibition" and naming the movements so they could imagine the different pictures being portrayed in the music, like the Promenade, The Old Castle, the Ballet of the Chickens in their Shells and The Great Gate of Kiev. Tchaikovsky's "Nutcracker Suite" is another interesting set of pieces without words - the "Trepak" (Russian Dance) is really fast and good for imagining the dancers - and don't be surprised if your child falls asleep during the "Arab Dance" with its slow, undulating rhythm.

It is fun to see which pieces become your child's favorites. One mother just told me her 5-year-old was listening to a violin recording and really liked it! Some children may go for the Raffi-like kids songs with words they can understand and relate to, but don't limit the listening to that style of music only. Many children love Mozart, Bach and Beethoven every bit as much, especially after several hearings of one of their pieces.

So, after a nice bedtime story, let music tell its own story to your child.