We all want the very best for our kids, and that’s why we send them to school to get an education. However, there are things that we can be doing at home to help spur their education, their creative spirit and their mental growth.
Music education is something that has been studied extensively, particularly in the ways that it improves cognitive functions and mental development. There is considerable research to show that exposing your kids to music education will stimulate their brains, and I want to share with you five ways that it does that.
- Making Connections
Our brain is able to develop primarily by making connections. As different parts of our brain connect to each other while we learn, we can access information faster, retain information better and adapt to new situations with more confidence. Music education works with these connections, forming some unusual ones and helping the brain develop in one of the most natural and beneficial ways possible. Brain connections increase as music education is implemented, and your child will essentially become smarter simply by learning music.
- Reducing Stress Improves Brain Development
Music is known to relax the brain and relieve stress, and so many of us put on music when we are feeling stressed out or just having a bad day. Our mind and body respond to music in all sorts of interesting and often beneficial ways. Music students learn to rely on music when they need some emotional support, playing an instrument or just listening to music to calm themselves and clear their thoughts. When children are able to deal with stress effectively, they improve their brain development, as prolonged stress can lead to stunted brain growth.
- Boosting Auditory Development
Strides have also shown that exposure to music education at young age helps in the development of the auditory system. That’s the ears and all that is connected to, but as that system develops, so to do reading and communication skills, as a boost in the auditory system’s development cycle becomes a boost to your child’s ability to socialize, pick up new skills and educate themselves. Your child is constantly learning by absorbing sounds, sights and smells from the environment around them. If you introduce music education and that boosts your child’s auditory system, then your child is going to absorb all those different things faster, as well as interpret them and use them to grow smarter.
Of course, by boosting the auditory system, your child is also going to be able to distinguish tone easier and pick out minor, nearly imperceptible sounds and differences in pitch that the average person might not. In other words, your child can become more perceptive and more aware of their environment.
- Exercising the Brain
Your child’s brain can develop to increase intelligence and the ability to learn, and the research clearly shows that music is like a pleasant workout for the brain. Just as your muscles grow and develop as you exercise them and nourish them, so too will your child’s brain as you expose your child to music. Playing an instrument is really going to benefit your child’s ability to solve problems and deal with emotional and mental pressure. Your child will be able to think faster because their brain will become nimbler. Like an experienced athlete can easily navigate multiple obstacles on a course and find the best route to the finish line, your child’s brain will be able to find the best solution to a problem much faster than a child without that same level of music education exposure would be able to.
- Improving Spatial Reasoning
Some forms of music have more effect on the brain than others or have specific effects that can be measured. Different instruments can have specific effects on the brain too. Consider what your child could benefit from or what kind of skills you would like to see your child develop.
Classical music is a great example of this. Extensive research has been done on what classical music does to the brain and how it affects the development of children’s mental acuity. Your child doesn’t even have to play classical music to benefit from it. Simply exposing the child to this genre can boost their spatial awareness and reasoning. When presented with spatial reasoning puzzles, children who listened to classical music performed better on them than those who had not been exposed to classical music.
This?s probably because classical music is so complex and has a sort of mathematical design to it that stimulates the mathematical parts of the brain, which all connect to spatial reasoning.
What you expose your child to will affect the way that their brain develops. The mind is like a computer, after all, and what is put into it will affect what comes out, so it’s important to work with your child at a young age to control the kinds of things they are introduced to and to provide them with what they need in?order to develop.
Simon Dupree has discovered he has a passion for music from a very young age. Ever since then, music has been an essential part of his life. When he is not practicing, he`s probably behind the keyboard writing for Music Groupies.