Music and its importance in the first year of the baby
At birth, your child has a potential to learn, that it is up to you to help develop it. In this homework, music is very important in the first year and can become a great ally. During your childhood your child learns more easily and quickly, since his brain is more active than that of an adult. In this sense, he will be able to process music, besides enjoying it.
The baby, before being born, already enjoys music in the mother's womb: it relaxes him and at the same time it favors his mental activity, so, in addition to enjoying it, music in pregnancy will help him to learn. This habit must be continued after birth.
Thanks to the music, your baby will eat better and cry less
Recent studies have shown how music helps newborn babies to eat better, sleep more and cry less.
According to Gordon Shaw of Irvine University in California, "when listening to classical music, children stimulate, exercise cortical neurons and strengthen circuits used for mathematics, music stimulates inherent brain patterns and reinforces complex reasoning tasks."
If you put a little bit of music every day to your son, you will be helping him to stimulate his nervous system, since in auditory, rhythmic and musical learning, growth and intelligence are supported, promoting the association of feelings of pleasure and safety. You can play music while you play, eat, go in the car, etc. But you should never force it, but let it get familiar with it and, little by little, it will find its music in every moment. You can also play with music, with its rhythms, songs.
What style of music is best suited for the baby?
Depending on the music that the mother likes, the tastes of your baby will depend, since each responds to the style of music to which it was exposed repeatedly during the intrauterine life. There are studies that indicate that it is convenient and important to listen to creations of the type of Mozart, Vivaldi, Beethoven, Bach Shubert, Tchaikousky.
According to Campbell, musician, teacher and author of The Mozart Effect, "Mozart's music is very organized and clarity and organization are as important as any other aspect of Mozart's effect." This author affirms that repetition and familiarity are the key; and that a little music at such a young age can have great benefits.
Mozart was a master of the 'sonata allegro'that obtains a melody from a first movement, develops it and, later, recapitulates the theme. It has been proven that all children, between 1 and 3 years old, respond positively to melodic and rhythmic music, but not to the dissonant.
The baby associates music with pleasant moments
To learn music you just have to listen to it, even before it was born, so that it can be printed in your memory, fostering your taste and desire towards it.
Your child should associate it with moments of pleasure, not obligation, because the musical taste develops over time and the more you listen, the more you enjoy it. If you also want to have a reasonable musical culture, it is important that you mention the name of the instrument or composer that is heard.
Benefits of music for your baby
- Promotes your emotional intelligence.
- It favors the tranquility.
- Seat the foundations of his personality.
- Develop your creativity, your concentration and coordination.
- Accelerates language learning.
- Develop reasoning and taste for music.
- Enrich emotions.
- Strengthens the circuits used for mathematics.
Musical games for the first year of the baby
1. Dance with music.
2. Stop the dance, when we stop the music.
3. Sing
4. Do manual activities with music.
5. Sing songs, appropriate to their age.
6. Invent songs dedicated to your child and their abilities. He will feel protagonist and identified.
Tips to stimulate the baby through music
- Sing and play with your child to stimulate their creativity. You can spend pleasant moments teaching them to sing and move their hands to the tune of songs like "Los cinco lobitos", "Tita, tita puts an egg", or "When you go to the market, tell the butcher, do not cut here, or here ", etc.
- Musical toys are the most recommended by experts. Buy him rattles and play to make them sound first you and then him. A piano or xylophone for children under one year of age and who pound it to experience for himself.
- Suggest that your child listen to music at different times of the day. In the afternoon, while you cook, you can put a moved music and that the child moves his head and his hands.At night, a soothing melody that prompts you to sleep.
Although you see him very small, put music to him from his first days of life. A musical mobile, a stuffed animal that sings, a CD with children's songs, little ducks who do what to sing in the bathroom, classical music for the time of sleep. With the times you will see with surprise how they identify these melodies with the most pleasant moments of their childhood.
Rocío Martínez Weber
Advice; Silvia Gallostra Salabert. Psychopedagogue of Essential Minds.
