Ditching Baby Music Class (In Tune)

As my Ford cruised through the canyon, it started to rain. My six-year-old son and I were returning home from a birthday party for one of his friends. It had been a sunny afternoon, and then suddenly dark clouds converged. A bold radiance dramatically backlit the clouds. Rain is a rare occurrence in Southern California.

I had a CD by Coldplay on and the song “Swallowed in the Sea” began. After a minute, my son exclaimed wistfully, “This is such a good song!” I reached my hand back to hold onto his. The romance of the moment trumped my usually stringent hands-on-the-wheel focus on safety. My boy and I listened, and time stood still as we shared transcendent bliss. It is a good song.

Just as music can have a powerful effect on adults, children, ultra-sensitive beings that they are, can be influenced profoundly by music, too. Parents wonder, “How should I expose my child to music? Do I need to teach my baby to love music?” Music classes have lately become a popular ‘mommy and me’ group for parents to join. Instructors convince parents that a child will learn rhythm better and earlier when the infant’s feet are held and his legs are bicycled to the music. I spoke to a woman who has administrated an infant music program for many years. She truly believes that the children whose legs she “moves to the beat” have a head start in music education. I find this assessment extremely hard to swallow. Did Elvis’s mom bicycle his baby legs? Did she swivel his hips?

Katherine and her wonderful ten-month-old boy, Leo, are adjusting to the mellow environment of one of my Parent/Infant classes. Leo is easily overwhelmed by the presence of the adults and the other infants; he will suddenly look around and cry, especially if the adults talk too much, or if a child approaches too closely. Katherine believes he was deeply disturbed by the music class she had taken him to a few times, and that his experience in the class has made him distrustful in a group situation. Katherine said that a musical instrument, for example: a tambourine or a set of maracas would be placed in Leo’s hands and he was expected to play it along with a song. Then a few minutes later, when he was just beginning to take interest in the instrument, it was snatched away. A new instrument would then be placed in Leo’s hands for the next song.

There are major problems with this kind of misguided instruction for a young child. First, the child is not allowed to make choices. The adults decide what the child should find interest in and then the child is expected to perform to please the adult. Secondly, the child’s innate desire to explore is curtailed by the adult who limits his experimentation with an object. By interrupting the child while he is still demonstrating interest in an instrument or any object, the adults discourage focus and long attention span. Thirdly, and I think most disruptive for Leo, was overstimulation and the unpredictability of his surroundings. Infants find comfort in knowing what will happen next in a situation, and they do not appreciate surprises or sudden changes dictated by others.

Parents should trust a child’s relationship with music to evolve naturally. Infants are tuned into the sounds of birds, the hum of insects, or the howling of dogs. Children make rhythmic noises in the Parent/Infant classes by touching stainless steel bowls together or tapping a wooden block onto a large water bottle. They also make a variety of vocal sounds. These are sounds the children discover on their own and then choose to repeat. Children quickly learn how the sound is made and then experiment with changes of tone, beat and volume. These are active, participatory and developmentally appropriate learning experiences for an infant or toddler.

Slightly less participatory is an instrument like a tambourine. The child only has to shake a tambourine to hear a tinkly clang, but he is still able to touch and understand the source of the sound– the mini cymbals. Older toddlers, age two and up, may be ready to explore more ‘mysterious’ instruments like kazoos, harmonicas, rain sticks, table harps and keyboards, all of which have the adult benefit of being easy on the ear.

A child cannot participate in creating the sounds emitted from a music box or CD player, but because music activates the imagination, transports us, relaxes us and elevates our mood, the child’s experience is not entirely passive. Parents often use music as part of a bedtime ritual. (I chose to impose my singing voice on my poor children instead.) Music can make a difficult day more tolerable for a parent. And parents need only play the music they like to hear; they should never feel pressured to play music because an infant ‘needs’ it.

Children are sensitive to rhythm and beat and are often inspired to dance. Many of us have stories of our infants and toddlers grooving to music. (But, no, they don’t need baby dance class!)

A child develops an appreciation for music when he is exposed to it naturally, without classes or instruction. There is plenty of time for instrumental, voice or dance lessons when a child is older and may be compelled toward a particular music form or instrument. The perfect time to start lessons is when a child repeatedly initiates a request for them and not a moment before then! A parent’s impatience can hinder musical development when the child is enrolled in classes that create discomfort and mistrust. But a child who is allowed to orchestrate his own musical education, exploring sounds he can create and enjoying sounds that surround him, can stay in harmony with the music of his heart.

Here is some music on CD that my children and I have both enjoyed:

Ladysmith Black Mambazo—or as my children called it, “the African music.”
Raffi
Wee Sing—Around the World and Fun n’ Folk.
Our Time in Eden by 10,000 Maniacs
Peter and Wendy by Johnny Cunningham
Beauty and the Beast—the original Broadway soundtrack
X & Y–Coldplay

There is much, much more for moms at http://www.janetlansbury.com