Should my child be studying music? | Integrated Learning Therapy

Individual music lessons aren’t part and parcel of school these days, unlike years ago, when children had the opportunity to learn an instrument in their mainstream school. Very few schools have a row of ‘music rooms,’ with specially trained teachers employed to coach youngsters in the practical and theoretical aspects of music. Today, parents usually have to find a private music teacher and arrange for lessons. Is this something worth considering?

The literature says yes. There are studies showing that music can benefit a child in terms of both cognitive ability and academic achievement.

So if you are considering enrolling your child for music lessons, what would be the ideal starting age?

Timothy McKenry, writing for The Conversation, offers some guidelines as to this.

The benefits of starting young

It is never too late to learn music. Recent research highlights the positive impacts of music lessons for elderly people. For children, however, there are special benefits for starting before the age of nine. At around nine years of age musical aptitude or “talent” becomes fixed. Before this age it is pliable and engaging in organised musical activity expands a child’s musical potential.

Should I wait for my child to ask for lessons?

There is debate among parents and teachers about whether parents should wait for their child to express interest in music lessons before starting.

Some children ask for lessons but although asking is a good indication a child is ready, it is not necessary to wait. Time is a factor here because a UK survey showed that enthusiasm for learning an instrument peaks at ages five to six years. If a child is not yet learning an instrument, their enthusiasm halves by age seven.

Which instrument?

Instruments including the piano, keyboard, violin, flute and recorder are ideal for an early start. The Suzuki Method allows children to begin learning some of these at aged three. It’s common for teachers of any method to teach children these instruments from five years and up.

String instruments like violins are tailored to a child’s development with different sizes available. A child under five may begin learning with an instrument 1/32 the size of an adult instrument.

The ukulele has also become an increasingly popular “primer” instrument for children as young as four.

Brass and reed instruments (such as the trumpet or clarinet) require greater strength and losing baby teeth can make forming the right mouth shape or embouchure difficult. It is more usual for children to start brass and reed instruments in high school.

It’s not uncommon for a child to begin on one instrument and later change to another. This usually happens when a child begins on an inexpensive instrument such as recorder or ukulele and progresses onto the saxophone or guitar. Or a child might enjoy music, but dislike or become frustrated by their current instrument.

Choosing a teacher

It’s wise to exercise diligence when selecting a teacher. Good teaching—particularly for younger children—requires more than simply the ability to play. Teachers should have a qualification, experience and ideally belong to a professional affiliation. In South Africa, the South African Society for Music Teachers (SASMT) is possibly the best known.

Whatever their method, a good teacher will be able to articulate an age-appropriate learning method and explain how their approach changes as a child matures.

A good teacher will also be able to outline realistic strategies to help a child develop a sustainable practice routine. The amount of practice required depends on the instrument and the age of the child, but there should be clear expectations around practice.

There should also be clear expectations around the degree of parental involvement and intended learning milestones.

What if private lessons aren’t an option?

Music lessons can be expensive and they can take up time in our busy lives. Online lessons may be a useful way to expose children to music so finding video tutorials and music learning apps might be a possibility.

Provided by The Conversation.

Image supplied by Freepik.

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Martin Doherty, writing for The Conversation, says that at the age of about four, children reach important milestones in brain development.

One of these is a huge improvement in understanding others’ thoughts and feelings. This is the start of empathy. Another is in spatial thinking—understanding how objects are positioned and related. This is the beginning of the ability to read maps.

Martin and his colleague, Catherine Sayer, conducted a study with 175 two to five-year-olds to explore how children are able to use scale models to figure out where something is in the real world. At about four, children are able to use a scale model of a room to work out where something is. We thought that this might result from children’s understanding of how one thing can represent something else. But we actually found that four-year-olds’ ability to use scale models came from their spatial abilities.

At the same age, children start to understand that someone’s behaviour is due to what that person believes, not necessarily what is really the case. This has interesting consequences.

If you’ve played hide-and-seek with young children, you may have noticed that they aren’t always very good at it. They love the ritual of looking in all the wrong places first, but beforehand they may tell you where they are going to hide, hide in the same place every time, or not be especially hidden.

After their fourth birthday, they get much better at hide and seek. They understand that the seeker looks in the wrong places because they don’t know where the hider is.

At about three to four children also start to tell lies. They realize they can make someone believe something that isn’t true.

Understanding symbols

Martin’s earlier research with fellow psychologist Josef Perner suggests that four-year-olds don’t just start to understand how others’ minds work. Figuring this out is part of the development of an understanding of “representation”—that symbols, like thoughts, words, or pictures, can be used to stand for something else.

Children start to think about how words relate to objects. This means, for instance, knowing that “animal” can refer to something you already have a name for, such as “rabbit”. This might help children learn the new word.

Their ability to use a understand the components of pictures also improves around this age. Very young children use a lot of trial and error to complete a jigsaw, picking up random pieces to see if they fit. By the time they are about four years old, they start to use the picture as a guide, trying to connect lines and match bits of colour, while checking the guide picture on the box lid.

Developmental experiments

Another ability children develop at around four is using scale models. A classic set of developmental experiments involved a model of a regular household room. The real room had typical furniture—sofa, table, cupboard and so on—and the model had miniature versions laid out in the same way.

Children were shown where something was hidden in the model and told to find an object hidden in “the same place” in the room. Children of around four can find the object using the identical layouts. If shown a sticker under a particular chair in the model room, for example, they can go straight to the “same” chair in the other room. This is the fundamental understanding required to read maps.

Adults see scale models and maps as representations. Maps represent a town or a country. A scale model of, say, the Eiffel Tower represents the real thing. At first, Martin suspected children’s ability to use scale models is more evidence of understanding representation at this age.

He was wrong. Instead, the researchers found that this ability is based on a development in children’s spatial abilities that also occurs at about four. This is the ability to think about spaces and where objects are within them. Spatial abilities help with maths skills, and good spatial ability is linked to an interest in science, technology, engineering and mathematics.

Their experiment was simple. They compared the model room task with a test of understanding how representation works. The two abilities develop around the same age, but they found they were not related. Children who could do one task couldn’t necessarily do the other.

They also had a test of purely spatial ability. Children who passed the model room task also passed the spatial task. So it looks like the model room task relied on children‘s spatial thinking.

They don’t yet know why two important but apparently unrelated abilities arise at the same time. Perhaps it’s related to changes in the growing brain at this interesting age.

Provided by The Conversation.

Image supplied by Freepik.