Have you seen any of those “Difference-between-your-first-and-second-child” humor posts? Stuff like, your first child gets his own nursery, complete with matching bedding and hangers, while your third child sleeps in a crib underneath his sister’s poster of Ariana Grande.
I’ve been living it this week. My youngest girl has been observing her big sister work on some choreography for a homework assignment, and has now taken to asking her father, the moment he gets home from work, to, “Watch my dance, Dad!” Of course, it’s entirely typical for a 6 year-old to create a dance for her parents. But instead of dancing to Laurie Berkner, or Dan Zanes, like her older siblings, she moves to Shakira and Ellie Goulding.
But move, she does. Just like her brother and sister before her. And me before them (to the likes of Michael Jackson), and I’m sure my mom before me.
Dr. Daniel Levitin (I wrote about him in my last blog post, he’s a neuroscientist and musician), in the documentary The Musical Brain, performed some MRI studies on Sting, in order to understand exactly what parts of the brain fire in different musical contexts. In one of the studies, he asks Sting to simply imagine a song playing in his head. What Dr. Levitin noticed was that, despite not hearing anything musical, his body “begins to groove to the rhythms of Miles Davis.” (The Musical Brain, Christina Pochmursky, Matter of Fact Media, 2009, documentary film).
He comments: “The part of his brain that would be moving his body was very, very active, even though he was lying perfectly still. That points to an ancient, evolutionary link between music and movement and dance. . .”
According to the documentary, when we hear music, “the deepest parts of (our) brain(s), are ordering (us) to move.”
The evolution of dance goes far beyond Elvis. Egyptian paintings, dating from 1400 B.C., depict dancing, and history gives us many examples of dancing in Ancient Greece (remember Dionysus from your Greek mythology classes?) as well as in other, non-Western, tribal groups, the traditions of which many cultures continue to preserve.
Historically, there hasn’t been a distinction between music and dance, a division which we sometimes make today (like I am at this very moment, listening to the theme song of Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood, moving only my fingers at the keyboard, and not to any remarkable beat). As Dr. Levitin states, “Music is movement, for most of the world’s peoples and throughout most of history.”
This is not particularly news. I mean, this video went viral ages ago.
But I am fascinated by the idea that the connection between movement and music it isn’t just cultural, nor is it simply a learned behavior. It has deep, neurological roots that serve to ensure our survival and teach us the experience of human emotion. When we’re in Kindermusik with our little our, we aren’t just having fun lifting them up in the air, we’re teaching them to feel joy. We’re engaging our primal, evolutionary instincts to create a tribe and deepen connections through music and movement
Kimberly Sena Moore, MM, NMT-F, MT-BC, a board-certified musical therapist and neurologic music therapist, writes a great article about why musical therapy works. Among other reasons, she notes that our “brain is primed early on to respond to and process music,” and that “Children (even infants) respond readily to music.” Of course, at the Song of the Heart studio, we see this daily. (You can find her article here if you’re interested.)
Music therapy benefits a variety of people. For instance, cancer patients may use music therapy to help ease the symptoms of their treatment[1]. Music therapists work with kids who have Autism Spectrum Disorder, and military personnel who have PTSD. And research into the benefits abounds. For instance, Gold, C., Voracek, M., & Wigram, T in 2004 found that “music therapy has a medium to large positive effect” on children and adolescents with a range of mental or behavioral disorders such as depression and addiction. Even in recent news, we see that Gabby Giffords’ progress proves the success of music therapy.
While most Kindermusik instructors are not clinically trained or licensed music therapists (there are some!), they facilitate a researched-based music program that parallels many aspects of music therapy, including musical movement, improvisation and creating imagery through music.
It is no surprise, then, that Kindermusik educators hope to connect their program to all children, not just neurotypical children with a particular economic background. For this reason, Kindermusik International established the Ruth D. Anderson Kindermusik Children’s Fund. It “provides assistance to children who are physically or emotionally challenged, who are financially or educationally disadvantaged or who have lost a parent.”[2] The fund cooperates with Kindermusik educators who provide free tuition so that qualifying families have equal access to quality at-home materials.
Last week at the Song of the Heart studio, we celebrated We Love Kindermusik Week. My daughter was unfortunately sick, so we didn’t get her t-shirt until this week. Nevertheless, she’s been wearing it non-stop since. You may have heard your instructor note that proceeds from the shirt sales went to the Ruth D. Anderson Kindermusik Children’s Fund, and we were able to contribute more than $300. Thank you!
So who has received those scholarships? Here are two:
Joscelyn
As a baby, this girl’s epileptic seizures were extreme enough that her parents and medical team decided to remove half of her brain–with the thought that the remaining half would, over time, adapt. She has a lifetime scholarship with the help of Kerri Sox’s Kindermusik program at Playtime Music Studios in Florida.
Here is a video of her journey, and you can check out her blog here.
Alexis
Several years ago, Alexis received a scholarship. She was born at an unusually small size and weight (1.5 pounds, 12 inches), though doctors were unable to explain why. Although she didn’t speak, she was able to communicate with sign language, and loved listening to Rhythm of My Day, from Kindermusik.
Photo from Deborah Foster, 2012
[1] American Cancer Society website, accessed 2/20/15
[2] Kindermusik Minds on Music blog, accessed 2/20/15
I find myself continually writing in this blog about how Kindermusik develops the whole child (here, here and here, just to name a few). But as I sat in my daughter’s Kindmusik for the Young Child class this week, I realized that Kindermusik actually teaches music, too. Fancy that!
The first-year Young Child students have recently acquired their glockenspiels and have been diligently studying two-note patterns. They even have a variety of musical poems to recite as they work through the idea that the low notes are on the left of the glockenspiel (where the bars are long) and the high notes are on the right (where the bars are short).
Second year Young Child students build on this concept as they continue to add more notes and experiment with the lengthening and shortening of strings on a dulcimer.
Ah! But it doesn’t stop there!
I first became interested in Kindermusik as I listened to my sister-in-law describe this very concept. With my background as a secondary school educator, my lifelong interest in music, and having just had my second child, I knew that music instruction was important, but that I couldn’t possibly dream of having my particular preschooler sit at the piano and work with me to learn the notes. (I know some kids are capable of doing this, but none of mine have been—or, maybe better, I haven’t been able to do this with them.) Therefore, I was elated when she described the idea of using age appropriate activities to teach these concepts.
One of my favorite Kindermusik songs for babies is “Zoom-e-oh!” You may notice with your little one that when you sing “Up in the sky!” the notes are higher, while “Down to our toes” we sing at a lower pitch. You may dance to this song, lifting your baby up and down through the room, or you may use a scarf to play with, swishing it high and low. Though the concepts are simple, this is where our babies can begin to distinguish high and low notes—in an environment filled with love and nurturing.
As our children grow and become toddlers, they continue to learn through movement. You may notice that if a child who is just learning to talk says “up” or “down,” he or she also demonstrates the movement somehow—pointing, or even moving his or her whole body. In our Kindermusik toddler classes, you’ll see that we use simple poems and songs to tie the musical concept of high and low sounds with imaginative play, language development and movement. For instance, “Can you stretch like a cloud in the sky? Stretch big and tall, stretch up high!” Or, in another one of my favorite Kindermusik songs, you may “Walk along, Rover” or “Crawl along, Rover,” which has the added benefit of encouraging kids to explore opposite movements.
Once children become preschoolers, their locomotor skills have drastically improved. Therefore, they can become much more sophisticated in their imaginative play—hopping, skipping or galloping. This allows us to go for a hike in the mountains and fly like birds or hop around on the ground like bunnies. Additionally, children this age explore a greater variety of musical instruments, so that they learn about the different timbre of each one and see that there are some that make higher sounds (like bells) and some that make lower sounds (like drums).
At the Kindermusik by Song of the Heart studio, however, musical learning doesn’t stop with a child’s graduation from Kindermusik. With the Suzuki Singers class, children can learn to match pitches with their voice, and in Simply Music Piano or ukulele classes, kids develop skills to produce a variety of pitches on a couple of different instruments that may appeal to them.
And, yes, I suppose I could make a case for applying musical concepts of high and low sounds to something philosophical, like helping kids understand the highs and lows of life. But, sometimes just learning the music is great, too!
Proprioception: from Latin proprius, meaning “one’s own”, “individual” and perception, is the sense of the relative position of neighboring parts of the body and strength of effort being employed in movement.[1]
As Joseph Bennington-Castro explains here, proprioception is “more complicated than you realize.” (There’s good stuff over there, if you’re interested in the science behind all of this.)
If you’re in the Cuddle & Bounce class with your baby, you’ll notice that one of the activities we do in Kindermuisk is a bit of exercise—moving your baby’s arms and legs up or down, in and out. Of course, being a music class, we do this to a rhythmic poem that provides for language acquisition and a sense of steady beat. However, the activity also reinforces her sense of proprioception (how parts of her body need to move in harmony with other parts of her body, among other specifics) and helps her find balance.
If you go to the Sing & Play class, you’ll notice that sometimes with your toddler you’ll dance with a prop, like a hula hoop. Your child probably just enjoys playing with the hoop, but he’s also working on his sense of propioception. In this case, the weight of the hula hoop as he swings it around, or the balance required to step through it, provides a bit of extra challenge to his equilibrium, and helps his muscles interact together.
In fact, you’ll notice that throughout the Kindermusik years, we work on proprioception in a variety of age-appropriate ways, including the big kids, when they learn the Mexican Hat Dance. But why would it matter? Kids who don’t go to Kindermusik classes somehow learn to walk and run and hop, too.
I’ve learned in the last couple of weeks just how important this sense of balance is, and how targeting it as a specific skill and strength can be key to our overall health. Because of the hours I spend standing and walking around my classroom, I’ve been experiencing tremendous leg and foot pain. In fact, I’m now seeing a physical therapist. This week he made me stand on one foot while we threw a giant exercise ball back and forth, and every day for homework I have to spend some time balancing on one foot and then the other. I am genuinely surprised at how poor my balance is, given the fact that I am generally active. Nevertheless, as I’m mindful of exactly where I’m feeling the muscle fatigue, I can see that I’ve got all these muscles working in tandem to keep me steady–all those proprioceptive skills at play. Apparently, with things being so uneven lately, as the therapist explained to me, none of those muscles and tendons and nerves are working together very well, and this is both a symptom and a cause of my pain.
As is common to the human experience, I believe, when the system was working well I took for granted something I didn’t know I had. Now that I’m working to regain it, I appreciate what I’ve lost. I’ve also reflected, once again, how Kindermusik helps develop the whole child through music and movement. Targeting these specific propioception skills is more than just teaching our kids how to walk or hop on one foot—it’s helping them gain a greater sense of overall health and wellness. As a mom, I know it can sometimes be extremely difficult to keep working Kindermusik into my schedule, when we have so many demands on our time and money (including the increasing pull to do nothing!). Nevertheless, I’m grateful for the gifts that have come to my kids as a result—including those that may be happening while we just think we’re having fun dancing.
One of the ways we can connect with our kids, Dr. Naumburg asserts, is by soothing them. We all get upset (just moments ago I had to break the news to my Kindergartner that yes, she does have school today, much to her frustration). She writes:
“[Our children are] young, they’re immature, and their brains haven’t yet developed the ability to figure out what is worth getting upset about and what isn’t, nor are they able to quickly and consistently calm themselves down. That’s where we parents come in. We can share our calm presence with our children time and again until they start to internalize it for themselves.” (pg. 25)
Of course, this is easier said than done, but one of the themes of this book is that we don’t have to be perfect at it, we just have to keep swimming. Oh, no, wait, that’s Dory. Well, same idea—returning repeatedly to our goal, that’s what’s important.
She mentions music as one of the tools we can use to calm our kids and ourselves. Just yesterday, in a moment of stress, I heard a few bars of George Winston’s Thanksgiving track, from the December album, one that I played often in my late-high school and early-college years to soothe my stress—and I noticed an immediate, physical calming yesterday, too.
Years ago I burned a CD of my favorite Kindermuisk lullabies. (Yes, this was before I could put together a “playlist.” But it was many years after needing to make a “mixed tape.”) They represent moments of pure joy and peace from cuddling my babies in class, and as I play the CD even today, it’s nice to see how much of a calming effect it has on everyone (this can be especially helpful on car trips, as long as the driver doesn’t get too calm).
Here are some of the songs from that album. Check them out–you can even download them for your own playlist!
Simple Gifts (this particular version I love, love, love)
In my teaching job as a Spanish teacher, I teach all 9 grades at my school (K-8). I’ve mentioned this before, but I’m a secondary educator by formal education training, and so I am relying heavily on my background as a Kindermuisk instructor to help me with the younger grades. The first graders come to class right after recess, just after I’ve said goodbye to my fifth graders. It is quite the switch.
At first, I was overwhelmed with the frenetic energy they brought to the room. With only 25 minutes to help them learn Spanish, spending 10 trying to get them to calm down was proving to be problematic. About 3 days into the job, I attended Kindermusik with my daughter and as I entered class to meet with her and Ms. Carol, we did some “breathing arms.” Of course, I have known about breathing arms for many years, but on this day, I noticed the immediate change in energy of the Kindermusik class—for both the kids and the grownups. In addition to providing us with a little routine that said, “Time to stop talking with your little ones/grown-ups and focus on class together,” it immediately relieved my own level of stress. The next day I implemented breathing arms with my first graders when they come in for recess (I could probably do it with everyone), and the difference was remarkable. They are much calmer before they even come into class and our time together is more relaxed, effective and enjoyable.
I’m not surprised to find science to back-up my claims. NPR cites research by Esther Sternberg, physician and National Institute of Mental Health researcher:
“(Breathing exercises) can be used as a method to train the body’s reaction to stressful situations and dampen the production of harmful stress hormones,” Gretchen Cuda writes. Who doesn’t need a reduction of stress these days?
Jon Kabbat-Zinn is one of my favorite people. He created the Stress Reduction Clinic and the Center for Mindfulness in Medicine, Health Care and Society at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, and his work has influenced me tremendously in recent years. If you have 3 minutes today, especially if you are overwhelmed with the day-to-day challenges of balancing life and laundry and childcare, this little breathing meditation is awesome:
In my daughter’s Kindermusik for the Young Childclass this week, Ms. Carol asked the kids to pick up rhythm sticks and scarves, each in turn. This step required the kids to stop one movement quickly and start another one, all in line with the mood of the music. Music games are a great way to help kids learn impulse control.
Neurons (the nerve cells mostly in our brain) work in only 2 ways: on and off. Hopefully, by the time our children are adults, they have learned to balance the activation and inhibition messages of their brains. Clearly, however, there are neurological and other physical/psychological disorders that influence a person’s ability to regulate impulsiveness—and it is always important to make sure the expectations we have of our kids are developmentally appropriate for them and their particular circumstances.
I find it interesting, though, that the other side of impulse control can be a child’s tendency to stick to one action or thought for a long time. In this situation, rather than illustrating a child’s inability to turn “off” the impulse to act, perseveration illustrates child’s inability to turn “on” the impulse to act.
I’ve mentioned a few times about my new part-time Spanish teaching gig. While I am a trained secondary educator, in my new job I teach all of the kids at school, from Kindergarten through eighth grade. My background as a Kindermusik educator has been incredibly helpful, since Kindermusik classes span a similarly broad range of developmental milestones in kids, when you compare the babies to the first grade graduates.
Throughout my day, I see exactly how impulse control varies as kids mature. Kids’ ability to control their impulses influences their abilities to learn at school. Additionally, I note that for some kids, their pervasive impulsivity or perseveration presents some big challenges that may have life-long consequences for them. Every half-hour, though, as new classes come in, I have to adjust my expectations to allow for brain maturity—and, interestingly, some of my toughest kids are in the upper grades (because: puberty—when the brain forgets everything it was capable of doing just months ago).
Of course, as parents, we have to deal with the consequences of children’s impulsivity. I spend much of my day at home with the kids refereeing the “Moooommm, he hit me!” sentiments.
Have you seen this ad? I’m sure the folks at the ad agency know exactly the kinds of situations that caregivers face when dealing with developing brains and poor impulse control. When I see that kid’s smile at the end, I just want to give him a great big hug. (Small print: I’m not endorsing Clorox, nor is the studio paid to pass along this ad. I am, however, their target audience so I see it a lot and my heart melts every time.)
One can find many resources for methods of dealing with the behaviors in the moment. But I love the idea of using games (when everyone is happy and not trying to rush out the door to school) as a tool for such development, too.
Other ways that we work on impulse control in Kindermusik classes include “freeze” dances for the preschoolers. With the toddlers, we have “fast and slow” dances, which invite kids to practice moving at different paces as cued by the music. Even with the babies when we transition from activity to activity, we are using play to help stimulate neural development.
Yes, in Kindermusik we teach music. But what a great way to use music to help develop the whole of our children!
I heard it said last week that parenthood is a continual journey of letting go, from the moment our children enter our lives.
Next week my youngest daughter will enter Kindergarten. I rather pride myself on being the mom who doesn’t have a hard time with the fact that her kids are in school (Are you kidding? After all the typical sibling fighting that I endure each summer? He was referring to OUR family when he sang, “And Mom and Dad can hardly wait for school to start again,” even though we’re some months off from that particular song.). Nevertheless, I think I may actually tear up on Monday. Or, burst into a chorus of “Sunrise, Sunset.”
Two years ago, I began spending less time with her in Kindermusik. We went from the toddler class (when I was with her the entire time) to the preschool class (when I joined her for the last 10 minutes or so), which meant I got to sit outside and get some reading done (hooray!). However, it also meant that I wouldn’t be able to cuddle with her during quiet time in class any longer. This was oddly sad for me. (OK, maybe I’m not the stoic mom I think I am after all.)
But I realize, even being in the toddler class meant more letting-go than it had when my daughter was in the baby class with me. Most babies, of course, love the infant massage and the dances. My toddlers only wanted me around on their terms.
This year, my baby enters the Kindermusik for the Young Child class. I’m so excited for her to learn rhythm and note reading. And she’s eager to finally learn about all the instruments we have lying around our house—she was filling the house with sounds from the recorder just the other day. Still, no longer will sharing time be about pretending to be cars going through the car wash. Instead, we’ll do a Mexican hat dance or some rhythm games together. Kindermusik, ever mindful of where most kids are in their development, has structured this curriculum to be exactly right for her stage. Still, even as we enter one exciting stage, we leave another one behind.
I don’t think I’m sharing any perspective that is particularly unique in its profundity. But I also see this process stretching ahead with my oldest daughter who will be entering seventh grade this year. This will be her third year in her particular middle school, so we don’t have that particular jump the way many seventh graders do into middle school. However, she is very much becoming a teenager, choosing solitude at home over spending the day with her grandma.
One day, if I’ve done my job, my kids will leave home. . . Yeah, I can’t even bear to think about that stage on a morning like today. Let me just focus on getting through Kindergarten.
I think this process of letting go applies to my own life. I mean, not just that I’m doing the letting go of my own kids. Rather, as an adult, I sometimes have to abandon certain cultural messages that I have previously held onto—ideas about how I to live “happily.” I saw this video the other day and the tune (and of course, the message) still rings in my head:
Melody Beattie, author, said, ““Letting go doesn’t mean we don’t care. Letting go doesn’t mean we shut down. Letting go means we stop trying to force outcomes and make people behave. It means we give up resistance to the way things are, for the moment. It means we stop trying to do the impossible–controlling that which we cannot–and instead, focus on what is possible–which usually means taking care of ourselves. And we do this in gentleness, kindness, and love, as much as possible.”
May you find gentleness, kindness, and love today as you let go.
[By the way, I couldn’t access that Colbie Caillat YouTube video with my safe search filter on. However, I’m a little dumbfounded that it is flagged as being possibly inappropriate, as you can find it on the Disney channel music videos. If you prefer, you can access that particular link here. Unfortunately, WordPress seemingly wouldn’t let me embed it from Disney.]
It never fails. The more I learn about educational theory, the more amazed I am by the Kindermusik approach to early childhood education.
As I’m getting ready to return to a school classroom to teach Spanish (my job before being a mom and Kindermusik educator), I attended a conference for teachers of world languages last week in Denver. One of the big trends in foreign language education is Comprehensible Input, or the idea that we acquire and are able to use a new language when we understand what we hear. Of course, we have to grow, so we learn new, small chunks at a time, with lots of repetition of those chunks—it’s what Dr. Stephen Krashen calls a “plus one” component. We stick with what we can understand, and push ourselves a little bit. Over time, this brings fluency.
Kindermusik understands that a parent or guardian is the child’s best teacher, and Kindermusik educators are here to facilitate that interaction and learning. Instinctively, these caregivers are a child’s best language teacher. We simplify our vocabulary when referring to “mama,” “daddy” or “juice,” and we go from, “Juice?” to “More juice?” to “Want more juice?” in such a natural way that language educators look to them for guidance in teaching a second language.
You’ll see this mirrored in Kindermuik class, and not just in the Signing Time where kids are learning yet another new language. Specific words get repeated in songs and chants (rhythm makes everything better), and we repeat things from week to week, with little tweaks to the activity that make it grow from, for example, a seated game to a full dance.
In a Kindermusik class, our educators will model how to scaffold music-making with your child. We base this principal Vygotsky’s theories of child development. As Lynne Cameron notes in Teaching Languages to Young Learners, “(Other people) play important roles in helping children to learn, bringing objects and ideas to their attention, talking while playing and about playing, reading stories, asking questions. In a whole range of ways, adults mediate the world for children and make it accessible to them. . . . With the help of adults, children can do and understand much more than they can on their own.” (pg. 5)
In Kindermusik class, you’ll see this when you watch an adult and child tap rhythm sticks together. You’ll notice that it works best when a caregiver keeps his or her sticks still and allows the child to tap those. You’ll also see scaffolding when you watch a dance in one of the baby classes—as a little one gets twirled in the air, she gets movement through space in ways she wouldn’t be able to on her own (obviously!). Or, with the bigger kids, kids will learn the glockenspiel note by note, with lots of guidance and instruction from Ms. Carol.
In fact, this principal is so important, Vygotsky held that we measure intelligence not by what a child can or cannot do alone, but what they do with guidance. Personally, I believe the kids in our studio are extremely brilliant, but I’m probably a little biased.
Not many more weeks until Kindermusik starts back up again in the fall! Hope you’ve had a great time at a Song of the Heart Summer Camp, and we’ll see you soon. . .
I find the science of how music connects to memory to be fascinating. Not only does it aid in language acquisition, it actively connects with our “autobiographical memories,” according to a study published by Cerebral Cortex and as reported in 2004 in LiveScience. The author writes, “(E)vocation of autobiographical memories and associated emotions by music counts among the most poignant experiences associated with music,” and shows in his study that music is tied up in our memories because they are both activated in the same spot of our brains, the medial pre-frontal cortex (MPFC). This is true even for Alzheimer’s patients—they can “recall songs from their distant past,” even when they have lost other, substantial memory, because the MPFC is one of the last areas in the brain to be affected by their disease.
The summer I was 15, my parents and I took one of the best trips of our lifetimes. With our little pop-up trailer, we drove from Salt Lake City to Washington, D.C., and back home through parts of the south. We ate at a fantastic Italian restaurant on Dupont Circle, stood in awe while watching the changing of the guard at Arlington, toured Monticello, got a flat tire in the scorching heat of Oklahoma, witnessed the most incredible lightening storm through the panhandle of Texas and climbed through the ruins of Mesa Verde.
Of course, being 15, and an only child, much of the time I spent “tuned out” on my Walkman (speaking of memories). So, when I wasn’t listening to Frankenstein on tape (now they’re called “audiobooks,” but I still find myself inclined to call it a book-on-tape, as it actually was “on tape”), I found myself engrossed in U2’s Rattle and Hum, which had just come out. It seemed the perfect soundtrack for the trip—just enough rebellious spirit in the music to quench my need to disengage from my parents from time to time. And lyrics that, more often than not, seemed to match our experience on the road: “like a drifter needs a room,” and “a highway speaks of deserts dry, of cool green valleys.” I ask you, is there any better place to hear “The Star-Spangled Banner,” (at the time, my first exposure to Jimi Hendrix) than when you’ve just come from a walk along the Mall? Even today, when I hear those opening lines, “This is a song Charles Manson stole from the Beatles, we’re stealing it back,” I cannot help but be transported immediately to the back seat of the car, my dad at the helm, crawling along on the scenic BWI parkway.
Several years ago, I made a mixed-CD of my favorite Kindermusik songs. (Yes, they used to be called “mixed-tapes,” and yes, I know that people now put together “playlists.” I am somewhat of a Luddite, cut me some slack?) At any rate, the other night, as we were winding down after dinner, my preschooler decided she wanted to listen to some music, and chose this particular Kindermusik CD. Soon, “Los Pescaditos” came on and I found myself on my living room floor, in New Mexico, holding my baby boy (who, at that point, was about 15 months old), with my oldest daughter and husband and all the other Kindermusik parents I was teaching at the time. It was such a calm moment of connection, not just with my children, but also with people who I had come to love during our short residency there. Lullabies in Kindermusik have been by far my most favorite moments in class, and now that my youngest is in with the preschoolers, they are by far the things I miss the most (probably because of this same music/memory connection). Not only did this lullaby calm my stressed-out mama soul at the end of a long day the other night, it reminded me of the many times I have felt joy and comfort just being present with my kids. As much as I love Rattle and Hum, that moment was infinitely more nourishing for my soul.
I talk about mindfulness a lot in this blog—about the importance of taking time to just notice what is going on around us and being present for our kids. I probably do it because it is something I have come to really value, but it is also one of the things that most eludes me as a parent. Even still, I consider it to be a gift that I have such a rich history with the Kindermusik songs that those memories and those moments present themselves to me at unexpected times.
What are some of your favorite music and memory connections? Please, share!
