Music to the Tiniest Ears

Parents are often amazed when they see advertisements for music lessons for babies! They have visions of babies who can barely sit up taking a traditional piano lesson, which of course makes little sense. That is not what really happens, and in this article, I will try to clarify the process of learning music that occurs in babies.

In the womb, hearing is one of the first senses to come online, and therefore sounds such as the mother's heartbeat and speech form the first concepts of the child's experience of its environment. These sounds are not only heard but remembered as well. It is a well-known fact that playing a recording of a heartbeat in a nursery will help calm restless babies because it is a very familiar sound to them.

There are many stories of mothers playing or listening to music while pregnant, and there is evidence that this music was heard and remembered by the babies they were carrying. In my own experience, when my wife was carrying our second son, we attended a nephew's band concert - and my wife felt a definite response to the band's drum section - every time they played, the baby started kicking! We decided to play classical guitar music for him in utero through headphones placed on her abdomen, and he came into the world very familiar with guitar sounds, and this began a lifelong enjoyment of guitar music!

Parents can teach musical fundamentals to their babies through fingerplays (such as "Eensy, weensy spider) and by songs sung while the baby is bounced on the parent's knees. The eminent music educator John Feierabend has noted that over the course of the last century, these two important ways of interacting with children have all but disappeared in our musical culture. In an effort to revive this, GIA Publications has published several of his books, such as The Book of Bounces and The Book of Wiggles & Tickles. He has also recorded CDs including "Ride Away on Your Horses: Music, Now I'm One!" and "Frog in the Meadow: Music, Now I'm Two!"

Lee Ann Kinner, a Dayton area music educator who, among many other musical activities, teaches classes for children 18 months to three years of age. She is certified in several styles of children's music education including Orff Schulwerk, Dalcroze and Kodaly, each of which is worth a search on the web. She says, "Children are never too young to experience music - during the ages of 6-18 months, the dendrites in the brain are most receptive to stimulation, and they are connected to language development. This is the time when they should be most actively stimulated not just with listening to music but with accompanying patting, rocking, and other movements. Research shows that small differences, such as rocking the baby forward versus sideways actually stimulate different areas of the brain."

Lee Ann's weekly classes are geared to educating the children as well as their parents, who are encouraged to attend. Parents then become the teachers for the rest of the week, with new ideas and new ways to play with (and teach) their babies. Parents need no previous musical experience - just an openness to learn and a desire to share this beautiful art form with their children.