Q was several weeks old (maybe a month or more) before I realized I’d never played him music. At all. Closest thing would have been the Gilmore Girls theme song due to the marathon I’d been doing in advance of the release of the new episodes. In the midst of those super sleep deprived early days, I hadn’t even thought about it. It was ironic, too, since music is so important to both myself and my husband.
I spent my early years in church musicals. I went to college on a music scholarship for flute and also play the piano and (once upon a time) the violin. T was in musicals over the years in both high school and college. We’ve gone to a number of musicals and concerts together over the years. I even worked doing social media promotions for concerts, both for several years as part of my day job. Music is clearly a big part of who we both are – and something that, if we had been more aware of it, we would have began introducing to Q starting with his time in the womb.
Once we became aware of it, we started to think about how we could add music into our routine with Q. We were super aware of avoiding screen time before he was born, so instead of turning on the TV for background noise, we started occasionally opting for Spotify or a CD instead. We even bought a record player so we can begin to make music more of a shared experience for our family.
We’ve been more aware this time around with L, and I’ve been periodically turning off the TV in favor of listening to music during my maternity leave. I’ve been looking into music classes as well, similar to the ones I did later in my maternity leave with Q. We planned to try to do this with L, but again, it fell off the radar.
If you haven’t read, there are so many benefits to introducing children to music at a young age. Music has been found to have a positive link to language development, test scores and even IQ. Whereas TV in the background can hinder language development, it can be a good thing to leave music going instead. This interesting article from PBS goes into this in more detail.
They aren’t really old enough for lessons or classes, but we wanted to at least make music more of a part of our household itself. Beyond exposing them to our own collection, this got us thinking. What are those classic songs our children should know? The chances of those appearing on the radio are very slim, so we want to play them from time to time at home.
Someday we’ll tell them more about our relationship with music. I’ll share about the 40+ Tori Amos shows I’ve been to. About dancing in the rain at Austin City Limits to the great Tom Petty. About my very personal connection to Billy Joel and the time my dad and I were upgraded to see the Dave Matthews Band in the front row at The Pyramid in Memphis.
For now though, this will do. We’ve started the below three lists — the classics, children’s and classical and instrumental. What have we missed?
What else have you done to make music a part of your child’s life?
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