Benefits of Children’s Singing Lessons: It’s more than you think.
Singing and Brain Building
- Singing lessons are fun!
- Singing lessons can increase confidence!
- Singing lessons can cause an increase in IQ!
And there’s more.
Children’s singing lessons are much more than helping your child carry a tune more reliably or getting them ready for their school musical. Singing actually exercises regions of the brain that are used in math, spatial understanding, reading and expression of emotion.
Musical training as children can also make them better listeners later in life. Studies suggest that music lessons enhance lifelong listening and learning.
Playing a musical instrument and singing as a child creates new pathways in the brain to process written words and letters.
Even in babies there’s increased smiling, waving, communication, and understanding of pitch with interactive song learning. Babies can actually distinguish scales, chords, and consonant combinations. They can recognize tunes played to them for several days.
Singing lessons causes brain plasticity or neuroplasticity – the brain’s ability to change throughout life. The human brain has the ability to reorganize itself by forming new connections between brain cells.
Neuro-plastic changes occur in certain areas of the brain in musicians that don’t occur in the brains of others. Researchers found that grey matter (cortex) volume was highest in professional musicians, intermediate in amateur musicians, and lowest in non-musicians in several brain areas.
One of the most amazing benefits of musical training for children is its ability to induce meta plasticity. This is the ability that happens from training in one area which later allows efficient learning and change (or plasticity) in other areas of the brain.
A well-informed singing teacher or voice coach will actually teach your child about neuroplasticity – how the brain changes when it learns music and singing. When children understand that learning changes the structure and function of their brain, they more easily see their progress and anticipate it. This leads to the belief that they can reach their musical goals and get better through study and practice. And that leads to increased commitment, which keeps them studying and practicing!
You can feel doubly good about bringing more musical and singing opportunities into your children’s lives. Not only will they enjoy the immediate benefits of music making, but you are setting them up for a life-time of better functioning brains and abilities that will last the rest of their lives.
We at Shameless Singing Music, Nashville, TN are fully committed to and constantly learning more about not only the best techniques for singing, but also how we humans (both younger and older) learn and how we humans can more fully benefit from sharing music and singing. Lisa also trains singing teachers and is a certified Be A Singing Teacher instructor. Email us at lisa@shamelesssinging.com to find out more or call +1-615-337-0853. We teach worldwide via Skype and in our Nashville studio in the Berry Hill neighborhood.