The Amazing Benefits of Music!

It’s widely known that music lessons are full of a ton of benefits for your children.  It helps build good discipline and practice habits,  builds motor skills and hand eye coordination, helps foster creativity, it can even help with building good social skills.  There are plenty of great benefits for our children having them involved in music lessons.  But one I want to focus on today is the amazing cognitive and academic benefits.

It has been proven that children involved in music lessons can be stronger academically.  Playing and listening to music activates both sides of the brain which increases cognitive function and abilities in multiple areas.  In fact, a study led by Ellen Winner, professor of psychology at Boston College, and Gottfried Schlaug, professor of neurology at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Harvard Medical School, found changes in the brain images of children who underwent 15 months of weekly music instruction and practice. The students in the study who received music lessons had improved sound recognition and fine motor skills, and brain imaging showed changes to the portions and functions of the brain associated with those abilities.

There is also a direct correlation between cognitive growth from music activity and an increase in a child’s test scores.  A study published in 2007 by Christopher Johnson, professor of music education and music therapy at the University of Kansas, revealed that students in elementary schools with superior music education programs scored around 22 percent higher in English and 20 percent higher in math scores on standardized tests, compared to schools with lower-quality music programs.  Johnson compares the concentration that music training requires to the focus needed to perform well on a standardized test.

Having your children involved in music also helps builds language skills. As they learn their instrument, children become accustomed to different sounds that they would not have recognized before. This practice trains their ears for the nuances and subtle sounds of language.  Starting at a very young age, children start learning to process and decode sounds and language.  The practice of listening to and studying music increases those skills needed in processing language and speech. According to the Children’s Music Workshop, the effect of music education on language development can be seen in the brain. Recent studies have clearly indicated that musical training physically develops the part of the left side of the brain known to be involved with processing language, and can actually wire the brain’s circuits in specific ways. It has been shown to also increase recall skills.

So among the many different benefits if children playing music, cognitive growth and development is one of the greater ones that will impact them in the long run.  But remember, the goal of involving your child in music shouldn’t just be to make a child smarter, that is more of an after effect.  Just focus on having fun and doing the work of music, the cognitive growth and development will come on it’s own in time.  Enjoy the wonderful effects of music!

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