Music and Its Impact on Your Child’s Heart

 

SuperBoy listens to classical music primarily. Why? I wrote about it here, but to reiterate briefly:

1) Science.

Studies on mice (albeit, not people) have demonstrated that the neurons in little forming brains develop in a more orderly fashion when exposed constantly to classical music, versus pop/silence, versus the very detrimental rock/heavy metal which actually showed a distortion of neurological development in mice necropsies.

Wow. Your child’s brain is this delicate sponge that’s developing every second. In the first year of life, the brain grows more than any other time. Sheer growth, sheer added and changing.

So that’s one scientific reason. But say you don’t believe those studies translate to people. Okay, try some of these other ones out.

2) Beauty.

Developing a sense of beauty and depth of wonder are universal parenting goals, right? Would you rather your child know the words to a hip hop song replete with questionable pejorative phrases that are misogynistic? Or would you prefer she recognize Vivaldi’s Four Seasons? Or know the words to a great aria from one of the great operas? Okay, so maybe she won’t do it in Italian, but she can sure hum along! Classical music is more beautiful and uplifting in my opinion than pop, oldies, rap, metal, or even classic rock.

3) Knowledge and identifiability of instruments.

Listening to classical music of all kinds, not that bad elevator stuff or dental office reruns, encourages and enables children to identify specific instruments that aren’t present in other forms of music generally. Like the oboe! Or the flute! Or even, my favorite, the cello! (I know Damien Rice had a cellist in some of his tracks, and it’s hauntingly beautiful, but that’s an exception).

A little story from SuperBoy’s musical exposition here. My mom had her Scythian tee shirt on which sports a fiddle. He listens to Cake for Dinner, a children’s album by Scythian, every day and we are always telling him “violin” or “guitar” or whatnot. He also has a book with a bear playing a fiddle. Somehow his little brain put all this together and when my mom was putting him down for his nap one day while wearing this tee shirt, and talking about the violin with him, he pointed at her tee shirt repeatedly. Again later in the day when Cake for Dinner had a primarily violin song on, SuperBoy pointed at my mom’s tee shirt with a fiddle on it from Scythian. Uncanny! He’s only a year old.

Now their fiddler Alex is classically trained and can play the violin like none other. (He’s studied with Suzuki in Japan, learned on the streets of Ireland, and takes his Ukrainian heritage to the heart of the violin). Check out this unbelievable video of them performing here. Maybe SuperBoy will grow up studying the violin!

4) Variety.

Classical music has the most variety of any genre. You’ve got Tchaikovsky’s ballets, Chopin’s piano concertos, Beethoveen’s masses, and Bach’s unaccompanied cello suites (SuperBoy’s birth song is the prelude in G!). I love other music too, and I’m not saying he will never hear Pearl Jam or ACDC but when he’s so little and his brain is forming, why not feed it the best and most beautiful nutrients?