MUSIC AND YOUR BABY

More than entertainment, music affects how the brain works and learns

If you’ve ever hummed a lullaby to a baby, distracted a toddler on a car journey with 14 verses of Old Macdonald, or clapped out a rhythm for a marching preschooler, you’ve seen the power of music. Making music is one of our most basic human instincts – all cultures the world over make music with their voices or instruments. Babies worldwide are sung to sleep with lullabies that have a tempo similar to that of the human heart in a relaxed state. A mother’s voice has an almost magical ability to soothe and calm a baby. Music affects us in extraordinary ways, and science continues to find new evidence of its power.

A BRAIN THING

According to Dr Annette Lotter, a doctor of education who specialises in brain profiling, babies can hear and process sounds from three months prior to birth, and this has a profound effect on their emotional development. She adds that our bodies respond physically to different types of music, and she believes that music can be used to help us all relax, concentrate, or go to sleep.

“Throughout the day, brain waves vary in any human, baby or adult. When you are experiencing alpha brain waves, both hemispheres of the brain are active and you have total access to both sides of your brain. You feel focused, relaxed and content. If you are agitated, the non-dominant hemisphere in the cortex will switch off. So you might find yourself unable to remember or recall information such as names and facts,” she says.

Music has a direct impact on brain waves, she says. “A normal heartbeat is more or less 60 to 75 beats per minute. To induce alpha brain waves, where the two hemispheres are open and functioning well and primed to learn, play music with the same beats per minute – what I call active music.”

To relax your baby, for instance during breastfeeding or before putting her down to sleep, play slower music. By contrast, very fast and noisy music makes the heart beat faster. Dr Lotter says, “Music faster than 75 beats per minute affects the functioning of the cortex. A baby sitting in front of a noisy cartoon is not able to process information rationally. The information he sees goes to the middle brain where values and beliefs are kept, which is a problem if it is a violent cartoon image, for instance.”

MUSIC AND LEARNING

Music is linked to speech and language, which in turn forms the basis of reading and writing. Like speech, music has rhythm, pitch and tone. Through listening to and joining in with nursery rhymes and simple songs, babies and toddlers learn important auditory skills.

Genevieve Ryan, a music teacher at Bellavista School, explains how music can have a positive effect on language. She says, “In music, the children listen to the beat, to whether music is fast or slow, loud or soft. I put a story to a piece of music, which helps them understand and remember. They have to focus, and listen for different instruments to come in.” She says that music helps concentration, too: “When they play together, each child is keen to play but has to listen for when to come in, and wait his turn. It is good for impulse control.”

Songs build vocabulary –

think how Head, Shoulders,

Knees And Toes teaches the names of body parts, or

Old Macdonald prompts your toddler to chip in with the names of different farm animals – and give opportunities for practising pronunciation. Rhymes and songs help young children develop phonemic awareness (the ability to hear sounds and distinguish between them), and phonemic awareness is a key skill for reading.

Songs develop memory and cognitive skills, too, as your little one remembers the words and processes their meaning. They engage the imagination, or the sense of humour. Some songs have a mathematical element ( Ten Green Bottles or

There Were Three In The Bed, for example), while others, like

Incy Wincy Spider or Two Little Dickie Birds, give opportunities for using important fine motor skills. Setting words to music also helps the brain remember and retain those words, which is useful when children need to remember important information such as mom’s cell number, or how to spell their own name.

So, what of the claim that music can actually make your baby smarter? That’s perhaps a rather general statement for a complex topic. Popping a CD into a player is not simply going to create a genius, but it is fair to say that music can contribute to your child’s intellectual development in various ways. Music (in particular classical music) has a complex underlying structure, which babies seem to grasp. Music is powerfully connected to other abilities, including maths and language. Music contributes to a rich and stimulating cultural environment, which can only be good for your baby’s intellectual development.