From the first month ... play music for your baby

The music is a language that only has seven phonemes: Do, Re, Mi, Fa, Sol, La, Si, compared to Castilian, for example, which has 24. And yet, for most of us it is only a form of entertainment, whose domain is limited to a select few.

Music since they are born

How is it possible? Children learn to understand and express themselves in a language in less than six years - and they master it for that age - by the mere fact of being immersed in it from the moment of birth. But few, very few, enjoy an equal immersion in music during their early years.

Mozart composed his first concert with 6 years, precisely because in his house music was the true "mother tongue". But it is not about creating geniuses, but simply that children, the little ones, know it better so that they can enjoy it more.

It has been said that listening to Mozart's music can increase intelligence. But aside from all the reservations with which affirmations of this type must be taken into account, it has been proven that the corpus callosum - the structure that communicates the two cerebral hemispheres - is up to eight times denser in professional musicians than in the rest of people.

Brain organization grows with music

Knowing music has as many subjects as knowing a language, and therefore from the cerebral point of view, the more aspects of music are known, and better yet, mastered, the greater cerebral organization we will have created. For example, listening to music is not the same as singing (equivalents in abstract language to hear and understand a conversation and talk).

Greater degree of complexity means knowing how to read a score (equivalent to reading a language), and naturally much more complex is knowing how to write music, since in addition to knowing the symbols and "the grammar" that dominates them, writing music is always an artistic creation .

Teach your baby with your voice

But, How can you teach music to a baby? Naturally, it is not about having the radio on all day, everything that deserves to be learned requires a minimum of attention and care, nor is it necessary to send them to any "academy".

The first, as always, is to decide that we want music to be part of our baby's daily activities. From its first month, we will have to choose which of the different activities are those that we are going to start up.

Of course, if you want to exercise your child to enjoy music, the simplest thing is to teach him to use the best known instrument: the voice. Singing, even if it's wrong, is one of the funniest things we can do. And free! Your child does not care if you do it badly or well; what matters is that he is having fun with you. Where have there been so many lullabies that once sang to us?

You can select songs that you particularly like or that are very easy for you. Sing when you are in the car, when you are changing your diaper or, better yet, whenever you feel like it.

It is not about earning Eurovision, but about teaching your child that music is a form of communication, and that we can use it to say what we usually say simply by speaking.

These steps that we mentioned below, are not going to get your child to play an instrument before six years. That would require a little more effort. But they will provide you with a vision of music very different from what we have, and a greater facility to learn when you grow up.

Musical activities for your baby

1º Do not limit your "singing sessions" to the already known songs, uses the music of the songs of all the life and "ponles letter", that yes, without pencil or paper, improvises!
Let us give you an example. Do you remember "Once there was a circus"? Surely, despite the years that have passed, you could still sing the whole song from beginning to end. Well here is a letter created on the fly, going to the purchase - Put you the music:

"There was once, papa papapa papam
a girl whose name was Martita,
and she was very pretty, very good and very pretty,
and his dad loved him a lot.

How good she is! How beautiful she is!
How I want to - MARTITA!
It's the best one, it's sensational!
Every day I love him more!

2nd If you want to go one step further and teach true quality music what you should do is select a small piece (the first two minutes of Vivaldi's "Spring", for example), tell your child what he / she will listen to and who composed it, and simply keep quiet while you both enjoy hearing it.This, repeated three times a day for several days, will get your child to recognize that piece at any time and place for the rest of his life.

3º Try to use a variety of styles as wide as possible. Each style of music uses a rhythm and frequencies.

Ignacio Calderón. Institute of Applied Neuropsychology and Psychopedagogy.