The Huge Impact Singing Has on Your Baby’s Brain
Warm up your vocal cords: singing is a powerful tool. Babies tune into singing more than talking, and even if you don’t think you have a great voice, your baby will love it because it’s you. Research also shows that singing to your baby has a huge impact on their brain development.
Experts found that singing lullabies to your little one comforts both you and your baby simultaneously. Singing lowers your baby’s heart rate, decreases anxiety, and releases endorphins which can decrease pain.
“Lullabies allow infants to create neural pathways for calming down, soothing, falling asleep, especially important in the early months of life when brain pathways are being created. A lullaby is an external routine that becomes an internal pathway for calming down.” – Dr. Dennie Palmer Wolf, one of the leading arts education researchers and evaluators in the United States.
Additionally, singing playsongs—tunes that involve clapping, smiling, and other forms of playing—increases babies’ attention, and helps forge closer, even more loving connections with their music partners.
“We are seeing relationships between rhythm and language abilities, attention, development, hearing acuity, and even social interactions,” – Jessica Grahn, a cognitive neuroscientist and associate professor at the University of Western Ontario.
Dr. Anita Collins, an associate fellow in music, mind and well-being at the University of Melbourne, Australia, and the author of the forthcoming book The Lullaby Effect adds that “babies’ auditory processing or hearing sense is actually the most important sense they have for the first two years of their lives, the sense that gathers the most information about their world.”
So sing your heart out! And while you’re at it, check out Lovevery’s Spotify account—playlists for different moods and routines.
Posted in: 18 - 48 Months+, Language, Singing, Child Development
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