Benefits of Music for Children: The Effect of Music on Child Development

Music moves us in so many ways we can hardly imagine. It lures us and makes us sprint, laugh, cry, yearn, and ultimately, it helps us create precious memories with family and friends. To a certain level, music is also a sentimental archive! Listening to the radio while driving with your family makes you think that the 1990s are not that far in the past, but things are different for your kids!

A common question we parents ask each other is how soon we can introduce our children to learning music. Some experts suggest that a child as young as two can learn piano if they can recognize numbers from 1 to 5 and letters from A to G, or if they can focus on one activity for 10 minutes. Others say that you should wait till they start with some form of schooling until the child is ready for structured activities.

But the state-of-the-art research , combining information from many research papers or meta-analysis, clearly indicates that 'such rules of thumb' are misconceptions and may hinder your child's development. Instead, many experts now say that making the decision to start music lessons for your child is entirely up to you, the parent, and your child.

Many child development specialists say that music can improve child development and is best done early. The most effective way to help your child’s music development is to emphasize children’s autonomy, providing a safe and non-judgmental learning environment to help them develop their capabilities.

The alternative is to direct or control children’s choices, which harms and hinders a child’s natural development pathway. All children are born with the potential to learn and grow, we can help them reach their full potential.  

You can help improve your child’s readiness to learn music by assisting them to appreciate it actively. Jooki is a perfect music player to introduce to your child as they will not only listen to music but also interact with the toy to play their favorite tunes, improving children's cognitive, physiological, and motor functioning. Active participation in music appreciation will prepare your child to learn more structured music lessons as they are already learning to coordinate their sense of sound and touch.

Research conducted by Şadiye Dur and colleagues in a Nursing department found that white noise, that monotonous tone that suppresses other sounds in the background, has a calming influence on children. They found that among 90 premature infants screened for Retinopathy of prematurity, a painful procedure, infants who listened to white noise and classical music had lower pain scores, peak heart rates, and higher oxygen saturation values.

They concluded that frequent use of musical methods such as listening to white noise during painful interventions for infants is effective in pain management. Music is one of the most effective non-pharmacologic methods for pain relief that is easy to apply by nurses and at home.  

The first sound we hear in the fetus is that of the mother’s voice and her heartbeat. White noise is similar to the sounds in the mother’s womb and has a familiar rhythm, which helps us to calm down and relax. Here is a ready playlist of white noise for your kids to listen to on Jooki.

A musical maestro does not need a piece of sheet music to play! They are playing from their musical memory. According to research by Dr. Elnara Recepli and colleagues at the music education department in Turkey , students aged between 8-12 who took piano lessons had better short-term visual memory than others.

That is because music helps us train and build our child’s memory. Learning music also results in higher verbal and visual memory scores. And these results are equally valid for kindergarten children. Reading musical notes and transferring them instantly into finger movements is magical, indeed!

Music is a powerful human expression. It has highly visible impacts on a child’s development as it helps the kids organize, follow complex sequences, and keep and retrieve large amounts of information. That is why many child experts suggest children should start learning music early to aid their development.  Jooki is a perfect way to introduce your kid to the joys of learning music, with their fingers already trained to play or at least tune, a musical instrument. It’s like magic at a kid’s fingertips!

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