Hopefully you’ve enjoyed our Rainbow Connection Week here at Song of the Heart Studios. Did you jump into your at home Parent Guides for the first time this past week? Or did you joyfully implement them for the nth time?
A lot of parents aren’t aware that Kindermusik can and should continue at home! Your in-class experience is only part of the fun. Sure, it’s the main feature. Our educators are positive and engaging and deliver the curriculum with joy and expertise. But all that brain growth and physical development and connection that is fostered within each of our Kindermusik classes is a launchpad for fun throughout your week.
We get it: parenting is exhausting. The last thing you want is another thing on your to-do list. Intentions to download your unit’s playlist on the app get forgotten in the daily business of parenting. That’s why we developed Rainbow Connection Week as a special invitation to engage with your home materials and we hope that it has brought you and your child an added measure of joy this week.
Not just for fun, when you utilize the home materials and engage with your child during the week you reinforce all the learning that takes place in the classroom. Remember, repetition is the GLUE for the brain. Children instinctively understand this, which is why they sing their favorite Kindermusik song or request their favorite bedtime book over and over and over again! Their need for repetition and reinforcement vastly outstrips our own.
Beyond the learning reinforcement, one of the most important features of the home materials is that it provides an opportunity for yet more CONNECTION between you and your child. You’ll have noticed that most of the activities are quite brief. It doesn’t take much time to remind your child through an engaging and playful activity that you are their safe place. Research has proven that connection promotes cooperation and decreases power struggles. Who doesn’t want that?
In 2012 an archaeological site in Europe unearthed the oldest musical instrument artifacts ever found: flutes carved from bird bone and mammoth ivory. These instruments date back ~42,000 years. That means that when our Paleolithic ancestors were engaged in the life-saving activities of hunting and gathering they were also prioritizing the making of music.
A 2013 review of musical research describes how when playing music in a group individuals have contact with others, engage in social cognition, develop empathy, communicate, and coordinate their actions. Music actually impacts the brain circuits involved in empathy, trust, and cooperation. Perhaps this explains why music has developed and thrived in every culture of the world.
The key here seems to be shared music making, not merely listening to recorded music. It’s the act of connection that occurs when people gather together to experience and create music. It’s why every world religion employs music in its services. It’s why musicians tour and do live concerts. It’s why political rallies include performances by popular musicians. When you share music together your brain releases oxytocin and chemically bonds you to those around you.
Oxytocin is the same chemical released during breastfeeding. It’s the same neuropeptide associated with physical touch. It is a proven hormone that increases bonding and trust between people. Remember the feeling of love and affection wash over you as your breastfed your little one? Or when you gazed into their eyes as you rocked them and sang a lullaby? That was oxytocin bathing your brain, connecting you and your little one.
THAT is what we do here at Kindermusik. It is an intentional shared musical experience between you and your child that optimizes brain development in them and heightened emotional pleasure in both of you. For our older students, the sharing time with you at the end of class is limited. So it’s even more important that you engage in at-home music making.
THAT is the purpose behind our Rainbow Connection efforts these next two weeks. We provide tools for you to take the Kindermusik experience that you’ve invested in and bring it into your home. We want you to get the full benefits of our program and make shared musical experience a natural, daily part of your family culture. Because it will make your family even more bonded, and make your children even more cooperative, and bring you all emotional well being.
Music builds connection.
Music builds brains.
Music builds culture.
Music builds cohesion.
Music builds cooperation.
And, as we have learned from our Neanderthal ancestors, as they have passed down in our very DNA, music breeds life.
So dig into your at-home materials with renewed interest and enthusiasm and intention. Develop your own family musical rituals with purpose. And keep coming back to Kindermusik. Keep this development and bonding going through Summermusik and into the next year.
Can’t wait to see your beautifully colored Rainbow Connection papers as you bring them back next week!
Erik Erickson’s theory of the psychosocial stages of life has indelibly shaped the course of the study of human development since its creation. Certainly, the theory is not perfect, and others (such as B.F. Skinner, father of operant conditioning) have established differing theories of human development. Nevertheless, without Erikson, we wouldn’t ever use the term “identity crisis” to describe the angst that teens go through during adolescence, nor would we work to make sure that our newborns felt secure in their attachment to caregivers.
In my secondary teacher training, and again in my Kindermusik training, I learned a lot about Erickson’s theory, though in the context of children and adolescents. In the last couple of weeks, however, I have been studying about human development during adulthood and late adulthood stages. The juxtaposition of early childhood development with my own development (now that I am officially “mid-life”) fascinates me.
Of course, like anything we learn, when something applies to our life, it sticks with us. While I probably did have to regurgitate all of Erickson’s stages of life for some test somewhere along the line, it is now that I am actually in this stage of “generativity versus stagnation” that I can get my head around why it is that as a parent and educator I feel so strongly about being productive and caring.
Generativity, as Erickson defined it, is all about getting outside of ourselves and caring for others. We need to feel productive. There are ways that this occurs—through art or other creative pursuits, through employment choices (where possible), and through parenting or otherwise contributing to future generations. If it doesn’t happen, we stagnate and feel, as Erickson put it, “personal impoverishment” (Erikson, Erik H. [1963]. Childhood and society (2nd ed.). New York, NY: Norton.).
I think a lot about the impact that my parenting has on my kids, especially in context of the Kindermusik studio. I often hear that I, as my child’s parent, am my child’s best teacher—this is why home materials can be so beneficial. And it is also at the core of why we offer Love and Logic parenting classes.
But how often do we think about the ways that our children change us?
Many researchers have studied the stress that childrearing can be in our lives, especially when children are young. However, reading Erickson’s comments about what my children puts things in a different perspective for me:
“The fashionable insistence on dramatizing the dependence of children on adults often blinds us to the dependence of the older generation on the younger one” (Erickson, 1963, p. 266).
(From a developmental perspective, foster parenting, step parenting and adoption all present their own, unique challenges—but these are important ways for adults to meet their generativity needs, as well, so I’m not speaking only about biological children, here.)
It’s fascinating to think of all the ways I need my kids. They have all taught me how to love certain aspects about myself. Certainly, I have changed my priorities many, many times. With my son’s new interests, I have learned much more about bagpipes than I ever thought I’d know (no sharps or flats!). I’ve also had to learn not to care so much about the messy kitchen (this is a daily struggle—both to keep it clean, and to let it go when it’s not). And, just when I think I’ve got it all figured out, they go and have a birthday, and it changes everything.
There should be some concluding paragraph here—something somewhat reflective that sums this all up for you. Unfortunately, I find myself coming up a little short with the wisdom. After all, how much more profound can it get, then to think of where I would be (for worse AND for better) without my kids? The ways our kids depend on us, the way we depend on our kids—I’m sure this rests at the pinnacle of why there is so much joy and so much pain when it comes to being the child or being the parent. For those moments of joy, I give thanks. For those moments of pain, I also give thanks, though sometimes not until much, much later.
Today, may you have a mindful day of generativity.
