Do you view music as a less important subject to teach your child?

[ShenLi]

I'm curious... I write an early child development blog and I have noticed that there are less parents interested in music as a subject they would like to teach their children compared to say reading or math. I'm wondering why especially after reading all the benefits that learning music offers. If you are a parent who isn't teaching your child music, I hope you will take the time to answer this poll. Thank you!

[LMsMum]

I would be interested to know why too, so I am bumping up this thread.

[Kimba15]

I never realised the importance of music until I came to this forum. I have never seen any studies on the benefits until I came here. Before that I never saw it as something that was important to teach your child because I thought it was rather useless, and also my perceptions of the 'music' kids at school. All unkempt, grungy (although Nirvana was big at the time). Into drugs and not taking academia seriously or really struggling with school.

Mainly the perception (especially in my eyes) that music leads to drug and alcohol abuse (let's face it there are not too many clean rock stars on the straight and narrow) and who wants that sort of role model for their children certainly not me.

Now after reading the benefits I will be doing what I can to encourage music education in my children.

[DadDude]

We signed up yesterday for H's first piano lessons.  We'll see if he has the patience yet--maybe, maybe not!

Wow, I have a totally different impression of music students.  Let's distinguish between musicians, who can be very grungy especially the rockers and other people who play in bars, and the high school and college music teachers and students.  Those I always found to be clean-cut, studious types.

[Keeli]

My eldest daughter who has just turned 5 started having Cello lessons at age 3.  but we don't have the money to send our son who will be in the summer.  I want to teach my 6 month old perfect pitch and have a go with the older two as well but its getting the materials together.  I have been looking at Piano Magic for the older two to use but it is a lot of money when you cant have a try first, and at the moment I haven't got the money any way.  (as you may have guessed I am not musical myself).

[ariel]

For me the first reason prevails.  I know nothing about music  .  I always knew the importance of music.  From Brillkids, I learned that it is practically possible to start early and achieve better results, not to mention improvement in other subjects as well.  After learning about piano wizard and soft mozart, we are considering buying one of two in few months; my daughter will be 2 and 1/2 then.  If I had not known about these products, I probably would have waited till she reaches the age (5 or 6) where she can sit at a lesson with a private tutor for at least 1/2 hour before starting her music education.  I am jealous of parents that can teach their own kids abt music.  Imagine having the skills and being able to teach your grandkids. 

As for reputation of musicians, where I come from at least when I was young, all the musicians were shown to be very dedicated, disciplined individuals.  I have always thought that music requires that discipline, as with higher education.  And with discipline comes self control that prevents them from engaging in drugs, etc.  In U.S. it seems to be the contrary.  But I remember in high school in U.S., the kids who were involved with music, i.e. good singers or played some instrument, almost 85% were also in honors classes. 

[andreasro]

I've always studied a lot sciences like math and physics when I was in secondary school and highschool (primary school was nicer, a mix of music, languages, drawing, literature, little math and few exercises in the mornings and whatever else we were learning back then). Although foreign languages and music were my passions, and later drawing.
By the age of 20 I tried to learn to play the guitar and bought one. Also, I have wanted for a long time to learn to play the piano or keyboard.

When I found BK forum I searched for what could develop our son's brain. Afterwards I realized and learned from here that music can be beneficial to the whole family and can make dreams come true for me too.
So I wanted my son to have the chance I didn't: to study all arts, especially music (to help the corpus callosum grow, and train the ears), not only real sciences and foreign languages. I needed to give an education that had it all so our child could be able to choose better what suits him.

And if music can open opportunities and help him in more areas in life, much better.

For me, and for my son, there's no life without music. We both like to sing and dance, and play an instrument and listen to music and trying to guess what instrument is playing. This I want to continue nurturing in our lives. By the end of the year many dreams shall come true!

PS: There are parents on a Romanian forum that, after I wrote about what I have learned from BK forum, wanted to get their kids to piano lessons :P

I'm not qualified, but I have a good ear and am eager to learn. I know my limits, but I haven't extended them as I could. I'm a bit shy when it comes to teach him music, but I get more courage the more I learn myself.
Andrea

[ShenLi]

Thanks everyone for the revealing insights into your music education experiences.

Kimba - I have always had a very clean image of music (I grew up in Melbourne, Victoria) and my school was supposedly known for its strong music program despite being a public school. Your experience has been very enlightening!

I have been trying to introduce my older son to a formal music program (not entirely successful), but like Andrea, music is the soul of my younger son's life. He loves it and really lights up when there's music. He's too young for anything formal, but I'm trying to cultivate his interest with lots of musical games and activities at home.

[Musiclovingmom]

I feel that Music is really important to the development of the brain.  I came from a family that was always musical (singing), and excelled at math and science.  My youngest son started piano at his daycare when he was 4.  Although he really liked it, I didn't feel that he was 'clicking' with his piano teacher, so started looking for another.  In doing a web search, I came upon Soft Mozart.   We bought the home version of the program and he made such tremendous progress that we ended up upgrading later to the version that had more songs.  I think the program is brilliant.  He has been in the Gifted and Talented programs since Kindergarten and consistently scores either very high or perfect marks on testing and in school.  Of course, I'm sure it partly because he's a smart kid, but I also believe that the early exposure to music has helped with his school.... studies have consistently pointed to correlations between high math and science scores and music education.   I think it's because when one learns to read music, it develops visual spatial skills that are important in math and science as well.   Over the last 4 years we have been spotty about piano lessons, mainly because he is also a member of select football and basketball teams, so plays sports year round.  But when I asked him to sit down and try to play something for me recently, he played Fur Elise and the Harry Potter themes quite easily with very few errors.  I was floored!  Since he is going to be starting middle school at a challenging private school in the autumn and take up the saxophone, I plan to have him focus on piano this summer to refresh his sight reading skills.  Soft Mozart really helped him with that.  I'm not a piano teacher, but so glad to have this program that even I can use!  ( One of these days, I swear I'm going to find the time to sit down and learn to play myself...I've dabble with it and it really is easy and fun to use.....I just need more hours in the day!)  :-)

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