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The sound of a lullaby is the most magical thing for a baby as it is the most relaxing and soothing thing for its ears. The best part is that your baby doesn’t judge you on how you sing. The ‘cooing’ of a mother is just enough for him to sound it like the best singer on the earth. We bet even an Elton Johns or Pink Floyds fell asleep to their mothers’ singing irrespective of what notes they sang or what scale they sang.
Besides, research has proven that you don’t have to be embarrassed about being a bathroom singer when it’s time to put your baby to sleep. The journal Infancy published a study that young ones “stayed calm twice as long when listening to a song as they did when listening to someone speaking.”
It’s incredible how music can influence us all. We react to music by physical movements such as swaying, tapping our feet or nodding our heads or even drumming or pretending to play an instrument, some even emulating their favourite rock stars. Undoubtedly children are no exception to this. But do they react the same way? It will be an exaggeration to say that your baby danced all the way like Britney Spears already (unless you wanted to underscore an unusual prowess that will erupt like a lie).
Isabelle Peretz, a professor at the University of Montreal’s Center for Research on Brain, Music and Language, made a study of how infants respond to music compared to grown up children or adults. He says, “Infants do not synchronize their external behavior with the music, either because they lack the requisite physical or mental ability,” Peretz said. “Part of our study was to determine if they have the mental ability. Our finding shows that the babies did get carried away by the music.”
The study that was made by Peretz and team involved studying thirty healthy babies aged between 6 and 9 months. The idea was to expose them to sounds in a language not familiar to them. They chose babies who were not from Turkish background. The recordings consisted of music, adult speech or simply baby talk. The recordings also gave no way for any contact between the performer and the baby while the parents were made to sit out of sight behind them as each of the bits were played until the baby began to express anguish or cry.
It emerged that the babies were composed for about 9 minutes each time a song was played. When they were made to listen to a speech, the babies remained quiet for only half the time the time length in comparison to their response to song being played. A baby talk kept them unfazed for just over four minutes.
Peretz said, “Our findings leave little doubt about the efficacy of singing nursery rhymes for maintaining infants’ composure for extended periods,” Peretz said in a statement. “Even in the relatively sterile environment of the testing room — black walls, dim illumination, no toys, and no human visual or tactile stimulation — the sound of a woman singing prolonged infants’ positive or neutral states and inhibited distress.”
It’s undeniable that music can reduce a stressed mind. It helps soothe mental or emotional scars. Music also keeps the brain sharp. But when in it comes to babies, it’s amazing what wonders music can do to them.
Studies also suggest that “children who are sung to in their earlier years develop more extensive vocabularies later in life and may have a greater ease of communicating themselves.”
Music stimulates the parts of the brain that cause the release of dopamine that is responsible for pleasurable feelings. Indeed, it is ’tissue to baby’s tears’.
So the next time your baby is fussy, or cries for no reason, and his cry becomes unbearable, don’t rely on the toys or all the talking to calm him down. Simply sing. You don’t have to be an American Idol to do that! Bray if possible. And it will still be elevating for the baby’s moods.
