Forever Singing to Your Baby

This article is by Alice Sterling Honig, Ph.D., professor of child development at Syracuse University, New York. She has published extensively.The following article is reprinted from "Young Children" a publication of the National Association for the Education of Young Children.

Throughout the ages, parents have sung restless babies to sleep with lullabies and cradle songs. Many a parent, arms weary from holding and patting a fretful infant, has rejoiced that just humming two tones with the simple soothing sounds:"Ah-uh, Ah-uh, Ah-uh helps baby sink into drowsiness. But singing to and with your baby does even more than soothing her back to sleep.

Babies respond rhythmically by bouncing to music long before they are a year old. Even by 3 weeks of age, infants respond to voices with gurgling. The Melodic Message of Cherishing Singing can be a powerful tool for letting a baby know that you understand her feelings and needs. A simple melody with hypnotic repetition of words, made up to fit a particular occasion, reassures baby that someone cares.

When a baby hears his own name repeated over and over in a made-up song, he feels he is in a place where people know his needs. Parents use songs early in an infant's life to remind babies that they are cherished. With their earliest attempts to soother babies, with singing and reassure them with chants and melodies, parents nourish an early love of singing. And singing for babies is a wonderful technique to enhance parent-infant communication.

When Should You Start Singing With Babies?

When to begin? From birth, the baby is biologically primed to respond with pleasure to the human voice. Croon to the tiniest babies. Sing soft songs as you change a diaper. Let the song be about what you are doing or what baby is doing with a toy or with food. Teach formal songs, too, but interweave them frequently with spontaneous made up songs that reflect the interests and activities of your routine.

What Are the Benefits?

Toddlers love to hear a song over and over and over. Repetition builds mental muscles as toddlers practice listening and storing in memory the rhyming couplets or verses in song. Singsong questions to toddlers, such as "What did you eat for breakfast today?" encourage mental activity and a melodic response and convince toddlers that their activities are important. Songs about ridiculous contradictions awaken a sense of humor in young children. Preschoolers love the incongruities in verses such as "I know an old lady who swallowed a cow, I don't know how she swallowed a cow. As toddlers learn that they, too, can make up songs, they will delight in creating silly endings to familiar songs. This is the way we brush our ears will set off laughter.

Develops body grace

Babies 6 to 12 months old bounce naturally and rhythmically to music. Merrily we roll along, roll along, roll along gets babies bouncing. Some songs are accompanied by hand motions and finger plays, as in "The Eensy Weensy Spider". Singing games are fun for toddlers, and they develop body grace and strengthens large motor skills. Some toddler singing games are accompanied by large-muscle body movements. "If You're Happy and You Know It, Clap Your Hands" encourages toddlers to use a variety of motions. Parents can encourage children's thinking by asking toddlers what other body parts they could tap or clap.

Increases attention span.

Some songs increase toddlers' attention spans as children sing with you and concentrate on the lyrics and meanings. Vary the kinds of songs you sing. Some songs provide a refreshing opportunity for infants and toddlers to move their limbs, acquire grace, and exercise while singing along. Younger babies listen to you and experience the actions you dramatize as you clap their hands together while singing pat-a-cake, pat-a-cake, bakers man.

Singing increases closeness between parent and child.

It soothes, gives reassurance of love, awakens early humor, boosts early language skills, and helps babies learn long phrases they have heard with pleasure in melodies sung repeatedly for them and with them.

Singing increases joy!

Children Learn Songs. There's no need to make a big deal about a baby learning a song for you. As your baby takes pleasure in the familiar songs you sing daily, as he gets comfortable with rhythms and rhymes, gestures and words, he will gradually try to copy you. The warm, loving relationship between you and your baby encourages him to try even harder to copy your songs.


Button to go to national site for music together

For more Music Together locations: www.musictogether.com • 1-800-728-2692

Music Together art & logo design copyright ©1992-2008 Music Together LLC. Music Together was developed by the Center for Music and Young Children, Princeton, NJ. Music Together, CMYC, and Center for Music and Young Children are registered trademarks.

This World Wide Web site is the sole property of MusicalMe, Inc. and no part may be sold, transfered, reproduced, linked, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including screenshots, printed page, photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without express written permission from MusicalMe, Inc. except for the class schedules and registration forms.

Web design by Kahleen