How music Can Help Develop Your Baby

Introducing your baby to tunes is an easy and enjoyable way to interact with your baby in his first year and can help set the stage for lifelong musical development. Plus, playing together with music can brighten his mood, benefit his brain, and boost his language skills. All babies are born with the potential to become musical, and they often react to songs with enthusiasm. Infants' hearing is well developed soon after birth, so they can respond to music very early on. Encouraging your baby's natural fascination with it can strengthen your relationship with her, boost her language skills, and open the door to all sorts of exploration and fun. 

How Music Helps the Brain Develop

So what does this mean for your baby? Exposing your baby to music and teaching the basics of how music works may help your baby learn the language faster.

In fact, learning a language and learning the fundamentals of music are almost identical. From birth, typical babies quickly learn to tune into the voices of their parents—long before they understand any actual words. At this stage, the conversation is little more than patterns of rhythms and sounds that convey emotional meaning.

Around three to six months of age, typical babies start experimenting with their voices to produce a wide variety of sounds, including shrieks, coos, squeals, yells and other vocalizations. These random sounds quickly sort themselves into “babbling,” or non-speech that follows the cadence and patterns of speech. Consonant sounds soon emerge, and babies begin to experiment with repetition, rhythm and complexity.

Language acquisition, or learning to speak, is natural for most babies—in other words, they pick up a language simply through exposure. 

In a study of 9-month-old babies conducted at the University of Washington, researchers studied the effect of exposure to music on babies’ brains. Researchers exposed one group of babies to the waltz during social play. Another group was allowed to play without listening to any music.

After 12 sessions, the babies’ brain responses were measured. Scientists discovered that the babies who had been exposed to music had enhanced pattern recognition and could better predict rhythm patterns — both necessary skills to learn how to speak or pick up a new language. In their conclusion, the team of scientists noted that other studies have shown that musical training can help with the language.

Interestingly, while it appears that simply listening to music can help, musical training is even more powerful, according to the researchers. Introducing your baby to musical concepts, whether singing or letting him pound on a drum or shake a tambourine, will develop the same areas of the brain that are needed to master a language.

How can you use music to soothe your baby to help her sleep?

• Music inspires emotions, so music can be a popular recommendation to soothe the little one peacefully. And it is a welcome addition to the baby’s sleep routine.
• The music must be soft, soothing, relaxing, to create a calm atmosphere to nurture their sleeping patterns.
• A familiar tune or music or song becomes like a session of music therapy. Slow, soft, repetitive music will actually slow down the heartbeat and allow for calmer and deeper breathing.
• Don’t underestimate the power of the mother, father or any caregiver’s voice while singing. Her voice is familiar and the rhythm is calming.

Can music help your child socialize?

• There’s something about listening to music or playing it with other people that brings its own social buzz, making you feel connected to those around you.
• Music at early age helps children express themselves and share feelings. Even at an early age, they can sway, bounce, move their hands in response to music they hear.
• They can even make up their own songs. They learn to laugh, repeat words and it encourages them to use these words and memorize them.
• We have learned about several mechanisms through which music impacts our ability to connect with one another by impacting brain circuits involved in empathy, trust and cooperation, perhaps explaining how it has survived in every culture of the world.
• Music is present in our lives, in so many aspects. At home, music can become part of our everyday experiences.
• From birth, parents use music to calm and soothe children, to express their love, joy, and to engage and interact.
• Parents can build on these natural instincts by learning how music can impact child development, improve social skills, and benefit kids of all ages.

Music For All Ages

Infants and Music: Infants recognize the melody of a song long before they understand the words. Quiet, background music can be soothing for infants, especially at sleep time. Loud background music may overstimulate an infant by raising the noise level of the room. Sing simple, short songs to infants. Try making up one or two lines about bathing, dressing, or eating to sing to them while you do these activities.

Toddlers and Music: Toddlers love to dance and move to music. The key to toddler music is repetition, which encourages language and memorization. Silly songs make toddlers laugh. Try singing a familiar song and inserting a silly word in the place of the correct word, like “Mary had a little spider” instead of lamb. Let children reproduce rhythms by clapping or tapping objects.

Preschoolers and Music: Preschoolers enjoy singing just to be singing. They aren’t self-conscious about their ability and most are eager to let their voices roar. They like songs that repeat words and melodies, use rhythms with a definite beat, and ask them to do things. Preschool children enjoy nursery rhymes and songs about familiar things like toys, animals, play activities, and people. They also like finger plays and nonsense rhymes with or without musical accompaniment.

School-Age Children and Music: Most young school-age children are intrigued by kids’ singalong songs that involve counting, spelling, or remembering a sequence of events. School-age children begin expressing their likes and dislikes of different types of music. They may express an interest in music education, such as music lessons for kids.

Teens and Music: Teenagers may use musical experiences to form friendships and to set themselves apart from parents and younger kids. They often want to hang out and listen to music after school with a group of friends. Remember those days of basement and garage bands? Teens often have a strong interest in taking music lessons or playing in a band.