Parents and Caregivers Are the Real Teachers

I’d like to talk to you about the idea that is fundamental to the Music Together approach—that parents and caregivers are a child’s most important teachers. Children learn music by seeing people they love model how to be active music-makers. And, in turn, the adults become more and more adept at interacting with their kids in musical ways. By modeling musical behaviors, you become your child’s most important music teacher and help them develop the disposition to be a music-maker. That’s why we call it Music Together: the Together is You.

Of course for many adults, this is easier said than done. If you are a parent who doesn’t consider yourself to be musical, the notion of active participation probably seems pretty unnerving—“You mean you want me to sing and dance? In front of other people?” But parents discover it’s a lot easier than they think to become a music-making family. Regardless of your own musical ability, just by singing along, dancing along, or joining your child in instrument play, you are helping him gain the desire to be a music-maker. And somewhere along the way, you’re likely to discover or reclaim your inner music-maker, too.

In fact, to some parents, it can seem that they like coming to class even more than their kids do! I love it when I hear parents confess that they listen to Music Together songs in the car even when the kids aren’t there. And I love to watch them gradually shift from trying to supervise their child’s learning or behavior in class to having fun making music themselves—that’s success! Not only has another adult reclaimed her musical birthright, she’s also become a better role model for her child. She’ll be better able to follow through on what was sparked in the classroom, just by singing and enjoying music at home. It’s what all our Music Together teachers all around the world work so hard to achieve—encouraging parents to enjoy being music-makers, so they, in turn, can “teach” their children to love making music, too.

So if you’ve attended Music Together classes, how was your first experience? Were you nervous, or worried that you’d be “flunked” for singing out-of-tune? Did that change over time? Do you spontaneously hum or sing or tap the beat more than before as you go through your day? How has the Music Together experience become a part of your family’s daily life?

Kenneth K. Guilmartin
Founder/Director, Music Together LLC

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Our Experts on PBS Kids

Music Together coauthors Ken Guilmartin and Dr. Lili Levinowitz have both been featured on the PBS Parents website. Check out these two pieces:

• The Benefits of Music Education: Ken was interviewed for a story about the value of music to young children that was published on the PBS Parents website.

• What Music Should My Children Listen To?: Lili was asked for her recommendations on the best music for young children for this story published on PBS Parents.

Do you have a question about your child’s music development for Ken or Lili? Leave a comment below or send an email to news@musictogether.com.

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Play and Music Together

(some excerpts from Music and Your Child: A Guide for Parents and Caregivers)

For a child “play begins in delight and ends in wisdom.” Children are born experts at it, and this magical process is absolutely necessary for them to teach themselves what they need to know about their world.

There are several important characteristics that qualify an activity as “play”:

• The activity is freely chosen.
• The child controls its flow and duration.
• It is intrinsically rewarding or done for its own sake.
• The activity is relatively free of externally imposed rules (in contrast to games).
• It needs to be moderately challenging in order to sustain interest, but not so hard as to cause frustration.
• It thrives best when undertaken in a relaxed setting.
• Most important of all, the activity must be fun!!!

Although children do take pride in the products of their play, the process or experience of play is the most important factor. That is, the main goal of play—simply having fun—does not require the presence of a product in the end.

The substance of play in very young children is usually made up of the environmental objects and experiences to which they have been exposed. In music play, the child teaches himself about the music of his culture by experimenting with the information he has gathered from his music environment. That is why the Music Together model interfaces so well with this wonderful learning process!

The class itself is a safe place where every child (and parent) is exposed to a rich music environment. Also built into every class is a continuous and even richer spiral of exposure to new musical elements, plus many opportunities for playful experimentation. In Music Together, the songs , chants, and class activities are purposefully chosen to challenge the child’s (and parents’) audiation (musical thinking process) and provide a rich “ear-food buffet” to act on in—and out!—of class. Research has shown a direct correspondence between the quality, quantity, and diversity of music stimulation and the extent to which a child’s audiation develops.

Although the Music Together class process supports safe playful interactions with the music and the class community, it is imperative that children take their experiences home and act on the information that has been gathered from the class music environment. Play that CD at home or in the car—share it with your whole family! How wonderful it is to see your child playing with parts of class by singing familiar songs or creating his own short songs. Celebrate when you hear her recite familiar chants or make up new ones about her play objects or experiences. Join in when you see rhythmic movements that may resemble some of the movements from class. Get out that songbook and page through it while singing or dancing.

All the while you’ll be enhancing your child’s musical development by supporting their playful interactions with the Music Together repertoire and processes. You might rediscover your delight in music making—if you haven’t found it already.

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Infant Learning and Music

As a new faculty member at Iowa State University in the ‘80s, Sister Lorna Zemke was an important influence for me. Sister taught at Silver Lake College and was a pioneer in prenatal music development. I was fascinated by her program, which involved singing to babies in utero. She observed that newborns recognized their parents’ voices, as well as the lullabies that had been sung to them prior to birth. I was fascinated but doubtful. How could babies hear or remember anything from before they were born?

Yet, three years later, as an expectant mother myself, I was sure my six-month embryo kicked more around cello and bass guitar than anything else. We went to a jazz concert where the speakers were turned up and the baby kicked hard—and it seemed as if he kicked when they were playing and stopped between songs. I went to my OB/GYN the next week and said, “Dr. B., I am sure he kicks more when there are low sounds than when there are not. Would you be interested in doing some research with me? We could watch the baby on ultrasound while different musicians play. We could see if he responds to music and we could see if he responds more to low sounds.” He told me that the kicking was probably random and that I perhaps had a vivid imagination.

Now, of course, we know prenatal babies hear from the fourth month in utero, and we know they tend to respond more to low-pitched sounds than to high ones. We are rapidly finding out the level of discernment and memory that babies posses when they’re born, and we’re beginning to understand more about the stimulation they need for development.

One recent study by Nakata and Trehub (2003) compared babies’ responsiveness to their mothers’ singing and mothers’ speech. Babies six months old showed greater interest when mothers sang to them than when they spoke to them, as indicated by increased visual focus and reduced movement. We see this at home and in Music Together classes as babies “stare and study” when people sing to them. The researchers also noted that the regular pulse of music may also enhance emotional coordination between mother and infant.

Another study by O’Neill, Trainor, and Trehub (2001) documents infants’ greater visual attention when being sung to by fathers than by mothers. It also articulates the differences in the ways fathers and mothers sing lullabies and play songs when the baby is present and when the baby is absent. Both fathers and mothers were more animated and playful when the babies were present, but fathers didn’t raise the pitch of the songs with baby present as did the mothers. I think this study points out the importance of fathers and mothers both singing to babies: In addition to aiding emotional bonding and musical play, this may help babies develop their focusing skills and memory.

One-year-olds remember and prefer music they heard before they were born, according to a study by Alexandra Lamont from the University of Leicester. The “Child of Our Time” study involved mothers playing a self-chosen piece of music to their babies for the last three months before birth, then not again until the children were twelve months old. Eleven babies tested all showed a significant preference for these pieces compared to very similar pieces of music they had not heard before. The babies’ preferences were based on the amount of time they spent looking towards the source of the music. When they stopped looking at the speaker which played the music, the music stopped. The babies quickly learned the association between their looks toward the speaker and the amount of music they could hear.

Many more studies on early learning and music have been conducted recently, but even just these three indicate how much and how fast babies learn, how strong their differentiation skills are, and how important caregivers’ singing is to the infants. It is also an indication of how complex music-learning is and how much researchers have to study!

Did you sing or play music for your baby in utero? Have you observed your baby’s preferences for different kinds of music?

Lamont, A. (2001.) Birth of musical protégés. University of Leicester Bulletin, 3. For more information on the Child of Our Time study: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0072bk8

Nakata, T., & Trehub, S. E. (2003.) Infants’ responsiveness to maternal speech and singing. Infant Behavior and Development, 27, 455-464.

O’Neill, C., Trainor, L. J., & Trehub, S. E. (2001.) Infants’ responsiveness to fathers’ singing. Music Perception, 18, 409-425.

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Singing Development in Infancy

In a previous entry, Dr. Ransom shared how she uses music to have beautiful days with her grandson. Now she’s back with some ideas for how you might decipher and support the musical sounds that your baby makes every day.

What is vocal development for an infant? What does vocal development look like? We all know the sound babies make—they cry. But actually, there’s a lot to notice about how your baby cries. Parents and caregivers can tell if the child wants attention, wants food, is hurt, is “play-acting,” or is bored.

If you’d enjoy some at-home research, you might try noticing if your baby cries around a certain pitch or cries higher or lower at particular times. You might even go try to match the pitch (note) of his or her cry to an instrument—a keyboard, xylophone, or guitar—just to give the crying pitch a name.

You can also notice whether the other types of crying and squealing are similar to or different from the hunger cry. My grandson Jackson shocks me with his high-pitched squeals—way up in high soprano land—but his basic cry is the E above middle C.

Beyond the dramatic sounds of almost crying and really crying, there is a huge repertoire to observe.

• Crying when hungry
• Sound-making for pleasure: random and experimental at first, just like learning to grasp *Sustained vowel sounds [aaah, eeee, or ooooo]
• Punctuations or staccato notes: short, accented sounds, not a sustained cry [ah!]
• Sustained dipthong: multiple vowels shifting from one to another [aaaauuuu—eeee!]
• Squeals and swoops, most often from high pitch to low
• Spit gurgles, usually when the baby is on his/her back
• Consonant-vowel combinations, a favorite personal “vocable”

Pitched sounds:

• Coos: long note on one or two sounds
• Giggles and giggle-singing: a huge gamut of high to low notes
• Resting tone after or during a song sung by caregivers (watch for this at 2 months)
• Pitches related to the resting tone: 5th note above it, 3rd note above it (2–3 months)
• Nonstop babble, with occasional sustained singing (often 8 months or later)

Your baby may make some of these sounds and others unique to him or her as well. Jackson has a unique sound when he starts to get hungry. He whines on a pitch and if I whine with him, he’s surprised and distracted and he likes the duet. I can buy myself a minute or two to get his bottle ready! If I don’t hurry, though, it turns into full-fledged crying, very loud—on that “E” pitch!

The order in which your baby experiments with these things is not important. That your baby PLAYS and experiments vocally is important. How can you help? Babble, coo, and giggle-sing with your baby. Try it and, before long, you might find you’re having as much fun as your infant.

The other way you can help is by providing a lot of music data for reception. You are the ones who can create an environment full of interesting sounds: singing, chanting, learning guitar, dancing to old favorites. You are the ones who provide the raw material for your child to hear, remember, categorize, and create with. You are the ones who let the child know that dancing, singing, reading, swimming, cooking, science, and nature are good and fun. Respond to your baby for any sound he makes—greet him with a similar sound, smile, look at his eyes, do something that you know your baby likes. (Jackson likes the bottoms of his feet rubbed.)

In Music Together class, you may have heard your teacher talk about reception and expression—two terms from the psychology of learning which can help us understand what’s involved as your child becomes a confident, competent music maker. Reception means receiving information and organizing it, integrating it with other information your child already knows. If you sing a familiar song like “Tingalayo” to her in a slightly different way, she’ll receive that information and add it to what she already knows about “Tingalayo.” Watch her eyes, legs, arms, eyebrows, etc., for her response to the song. At some point she may express to you her version of “Tingalayo,” which will let you peek into her musical memory as well as her sense of musical play.

I ran across a term in an old book, the New York Times Everyday Reader’s Dictionary of Misunderstood, Misused, Mispronounced Words. The term was ear-minded: being more aware or responsive to sound than sight, smell, etc. How perfect for babies! I hope you enjoy singing and moving with your ear-minded infant as he or she develops other life skills. What joy to have made it through your own childhood, then experience it anew through the eyes of your baby.

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Babies and Music: Exploring the Research

Babies: so adored, so cherished, and so mysterious! Parents often stare at their newborns, wondering, “What is going on inside that little, tiny mind?” The curiosity is even more intense when that little baby is all curled up inside its mother’s womb, before birth. Did you know that the baby’s most developed sense, before birth, is the sense of hearing? By studying fetal hearing and memory, scientists have learned to unravel a tiny piece of the mystery of how the unborn and newborn baby hears, remembers, and even thinks.

In the article posted below, originally published in Perspectives, the quarterly publication of the Early Childhood Music and Movement Association, Music Together director Julia Priest reports on three current studies that explore how fetuses, babies, and newborns perceive and experience sound—and, in turn, music.

Read it and let us know what you think!

Perspectives Vol 5, No.2, Research Review by Julia Priest

Used by permission. Perspectives: Journal of the Early Childhood Music & Movement Association, 2010.

Guest Contributor Julia Priest, M.S., M.Mus. is director of Music & Movement of Newton, offering Music Together in the Newton, MA, area. Julia has been a singer and teacher since 1987 and holds Music Together Teacher Certification Level II, the highest Music Together certification offered for outstanding achievement in teaching, musicianship, program philosophy, and parent education. She is also certified in Orff-Shulwerk and Dalcroze Eurythmics. Julia holds a B.A. in Classical Languages and Literatures from Yale University, an M.Mus. in Voice Performance from Boston University, and an M.S. in Speech and Language Pathology from the Massachusetts General Hospital Institute of Health Professions.

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A Music Class for Babies?

Susan teaching a Babies class

When I first started teaching Music Together nearly twenty years ago, I remember trying to explain to my grandmother what my new job was. She seemed to grasp the general concept of a parent-child class that encourages family music-making, where participants learn new songs, play with percussion instruments, and carry on the music at home. But when she realized that I was talking about classes with infants and toddlers, she became clearly puzzled. How on earth do you teach music to a baby?

Well, in truth, you can’t really “teach” music to a baby. But Music Together classes do offer young children the opportunity to absorb and “learn” music in much the same way they learn language. If you think about it, babies are not born with the ability to speak—they are born with the potential to speak. And it is only through prolonged exposure to language and opportunities for experimentation with sound-making that a child will acquire basic competence in language. The same is true for music-learning. When children are given varied and rich music experiences, they will develop what we call Basic Music Competence—the ability to sing in tune and move with accurate rhythm.

It’s particularly important for the parents and caregivers of infants to understand their role in supporting their baby’s music development in the same kinds of ways as they instinctively know how to support language development. When a baby first says “da-da,” a parent or caregiver typically reacts with lots of positive feedback and immediately echoes back “da-da!” This response reinforces the baby’s first attempts at speaking. Over time, through listening to people speak and trying to repeat what they hear (babbling), a baby will become fluent in language.

When a baby first “sings,” however, most parents don’t recognize it as singing—they mistake it for random cooing. And because of this, a baby’s first attempts at singing often occur without any reinforcement from the parent. In Music Together classes, parents and caregivers are taught to recognize and listen for these first attempts at singing, and they are then encouraged to echo those “noises,” whether or not they sound like real “singing.” Just as children naturally acquire fluency in language, they can also become fluent in music-making—naturally!

Through the encouragement and participation of parents and caregivers, even the youngest children can become active music-makers. Music Together classes simply provide the environment and support they need in order to learn.

So, a music class for babies? You betcha!

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The Power of Lullabies

When my daughter (a recent University of Pennsylvania graduate!) was born, one of my greatest pleasures in being a new mother was singing to her. I sang often: to amuse her, to distract her, to comfort her, and, frankly, to keep my own spirits up as I went about caring for this mysterious, wonderful, yet occasionally perverse being who had taken over my life. And while we both enjoyed these musical moments during our day, nothing could put us into a mutual state of contented thralldom quite like a song at bedtime.

I would croon old standards such as “I’ve Got a Crush on You” and “The Nearness of You” as I held her in my arms. If she fussed when I put her into the crib, I simply kept singing as I moved closer and closer to the door of her room. By the time Emma was around nine months old, bedtime had become a no-fuss ritual of a story and a song that we maintained all through her childhood—for so many years, in fact, that she has asked me not to tell you how old she was when our lullaby habit finally faded away. (Pssst: she was in double digits.)

What makes a lullaby so magical? It seems to be a universal impulse for adults to sing to their babies; every culture has its own lullaby tradition. Researchers have shown that parents—whether they realize it or not—even have a special “lullaby voice,” a way of adjusting the pitch and tempo that’s similar to the adjustments of tone (so-called “motherese”) that adults use when speaking to an infant. Sandra Trehub of the University of Toronto has shown that infants have a high preference for this “infant-directed singing” and can distinguish between audiotapes of their parent directing their singing to them versus singing the same song in an empty room.

Trehub suggests that the infant is sensitive to the emotional undertones present in infant-directed singing, and that the lullaby is a kind of “synchronization device,” which coordinates emotion between parent and child. It lulls them both; it produces relaxation and promotes bonding. This was certainly true for me and my daughter. Over the years, lullaby time was when we had our deepest conversations: it was when a naughty deed would be confessed, a fear disclosed, a worrisome question asked.

The lullaby eased all of that, making everything all right at the end of the day. And thanks to Music Together, we collected a treasured assortment of lullabies that quickly supplanted my old jazz standards.* It was as if—right next to the bookshelf where she browsed to pick out her bedtime story—Emma had a virtual shelf full of lullabies to choose from, too. Bedtime in our house was a peaceful, deeply satisfying time of day.

If I could offer only one piece of advice to parents everywhere, it would be to sing to your child. Songs have a powerful impact on children—they can brighten their mood, relax them, comfort them, or help them to sleep—and that impact, in turn, helps the parent feel competent in their nurturing skills. And if by some chance you can sing only one song each day, please make it a lullaby. Sweet dreams!

*Interestingly, Trehub’s research has also suggested that there is wide cross-cultural agreement as to what listeners recognize as a “lullaby.” I doubt my beloved Gershwin brothers or Hoagy Carmichael would have carried us so well through the years; their sophisticated ballads lack the simplicity and repetitiveness that give the true lullaby its soothing quality.

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