Make a Musical World for Your Baby

If babies can hear even inside the womb, you can imagine how stimulating music can be for your little one right from her birth. And any stimulation, directly or indirectly, can help in your baby’s development. Did you know that:

  • Newborns are startled by high-pitched noises and calmed by lower sounds
  • By four weeks, your baby might start responding to your voice From three months onwards, they might turn towards the sound source and start cooing
  • At 20 weeks, they begin to recognize familiar sounds
  • By six months they might start imitating sounds you make
  • By nine months they respond to familiar songs
  • By the age of one, babies start to discover musical pulses, and create sounds by banging everyday objects

Is Music Good For Your Baby?
Though you may enjoy dancing and singing along to those jazz or classical tunes, you may wonder if your baby actually benefits from listening to all this music that you are playing for him. Well, you will be pleased to know that there is now growing evidence that regular exposure to music can help your baby out in a number of different ways:

  • Increased Brain Development: Recent research has revealed that babies are able to perceive different musical tones and melodies by the age of four months. And as your baby listens to different songs, various areas inside of his brain are stimulated, encouraging new neurons to grow and develop. This suggests that regular exposure to music may actually help your baby’s brain develop faster.
  • Increased Sleep: Evidence has shown that babies who are exposed to soothing music prior to bedtime sleep more soundly. It is believed that music with slow beats and calm tunes helps to slow baby’s heart rate and encourage him to fall asleep. So feel free to sing your baby his lullabies before bedtime!
  • Increased Bonding: Music provides a wonderful way for you and your baby to bond with one another. By playing your little one lullabies, country music, or your favorite oldies hit, you can have the opportunity to touch, play with one another, or just look at one another. This allows your baby to develop a growing sense of security and an intensified bond with you.

Music and the Premature Baby
Music has been found to be particularly beneficial for premature infants. Several studies have analyzed the effects of music on premature babies, and many have shown that music appears to have a direct effect on their health. Babies who were exposed to lullabies for forty minutes a day while in hospital, gained more weight, had stronger heartbeats, and improved oxygen absorption than premature babies who weren’t exposed to music.

Music ‘Grows’ on Your Baby
Parents know that while a lullaby can soothe a cranky baby, a fast-paced melody can make a baby excited. Music seems to prime our brains for certain kinds of thinking. As Don Campbell says in his book The Mozart Effect for Children, music should be used less to create baby brainiacs and more to simply to enrich infants’ lives. Your baby hones her thinking faculties every time she uses music to express feelings of love, joy, and security. In fact, music helps your baby:

  • To be more creative with sounds
  • To learn new things. Anything set to a good tune makes for instant recall.
  • To express their feelings. Music gives self-confidence to shy children by bringing out their emotions.

Play Anything and Everything
Don’t be bent upon playing just classical music to your baby. While Mozart is fine, so is Ding-Dong Bell. Any melodious music can have positive effects on your child’s moods. So why do so many experts recommend playing classical music to your child?

Researchers think the complex structure of classical music improves spatial-temporal reasoning. Thus the brain can solve spatial problems, particularly mathematical, more quickly.

Classical music, such as Mozart, has the repetition children love and gives a familiarity of structure and rhythm to the ear, allowing this music to be used as a 'sound marker'. You can use these sound markers yourself. For instance, instead of just saying "it's bedtime", put on a certain piece of music. This will signal to your baby that it is time to go to sleep. But it is not just classical music that can be used with babies.

Anything is apt music for your baby. It’s just that infants respond more to rhythm and repetition. So, a baby’s gurgles, coos and squeals are ways to make his own music!

Things Parents Can do With Music
There are many things you can do to make a melodious world for your baby. Have a look at these musical activities:

  • Sing to your baby. The good old lullaby works like a charm to soothe your child.
  • Always combine music with some kind of movement. Sway and dance with your baby in your arms. By swinging, swaying and rocking she will learn a lot about rhythm.
  • Set music to your songs by clapping or snapping your fingers.
  • Make use of those sound markers and personalize a song for each baby care activity. Make a bath time chant: "Here we go in the water world, baby, to have fun...Here we go…"
  • Describes the sounds your baby hears around her: "That’s the doorbell, ding-dong" or "That’s the oven alarm, the cake is ready".

Musical Games for Babies
Besides playing music for your baby, you can also try out active musical interaction with her. Choose musical games according to your baby’s age. By six months, babies can sit up and you can include more musical games. Here are some simple musical games:

  • Give her spoons and plates. She will enjoy every time she bangs her spoon drumsticks on to the plate.
  • Make a shaker. Empty a small container with a tight lid and fill in with grains or ice. Watch her shaking and squealing.
  • Follow her lead. When she shakes a rattle, shake another one in reply; if she taps three times, tap three times in response.
  • Give her musical toys. Anything will do, from musical mobiles to very simple toy xylophones, as long as it’s safe for your baby.

Song-and-Dance Routines
It’s not too early to sing nursery rhymes for your baby. To make it even more fun for your baby, add actions, clapping and more sounds to those old favorites. For example, if you’re singing Old Macdonald, then bounce your baby gently during the "e-i-e-i-o’s," make silly faces during the animal sounds, clap your hands and flap your arms during other parts.

We all make sounds – some call it noise, others might call it music. Help your baby grow from noise to music. Experiment, discover, and make new sounds. Sing and dance with your baby. Have fun together because these musical moments will become happy memories you and your child are going to cherish forever.