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.
Disclaimer–this isn’t my daughter. But isn’t she delightful?
My youngest daughter turned 6 just before Halloween. With a new job, Halloween costumes and laundry to do, I did something I’ve never yet done with any of my kids’ birthdays—I got some outside help. We had her birthday party at the Song of the Heart studio, with the help of Ms. Katie.
As I’ve talked to other recovering perfectionists, I’ve realized that there really isn’t any set standard of what is “perfect,” it just kind of depends on our own definitions of “ideal.” I’ve been doing “super-mommy” for many years (rather than “real life” mommy, which I’m discovering is infinitely more enjoyable). But for me that has meant having great home birthday parties—complete with making our own lasagna, or doing puppy face-painting, or walking the plank like pirates (all of which included Pinterest-worthy, homemade invitations). I shudder to think how much stress I inflicted on myself and those around me or how much joy I perhaps sucked out of the room in an attempt to make it joyful. (I also try to be kind to myself and realize that my kids, once they’ve had an appropriate amount of therapy, may figure out that I really was doing all of this because I loved them. Passionately. And that this was the best way I could show it at the time.)
While I recognize that other moms, long ago, have figured out the beauty of getting help with a birthday party, it was revelatory for me this year, and born out of necessity.
And I’m not sure I’ll ever go back.
My daughter has been totally into dolphins these days, so we did an ocean theme. Ms. Katie was fantastic, and the speedboats/Bilibos were a total hit. Afterwards, we had a little picnic lunch and cake at the studio. We enjoyed ourselves tremendously, and the girls ended the party reluctantly.
My older two kids (a 12-year old and a 9-year old) were at first way too cool to participate. Nevertheless, eventually they got into it and they contributed a lot of energy to the room (the giant scarves and the motorboats helped draw them in, for sure). It warmed my little mama heart to see them dancing as they used to, but of course now much, much bigger than they were when they participated in Kindermusik as students.
There were some activities that they hadn’t remembered doing (but which obviously I have lots of memories about, as I’ve written previously). Even still, I found it fascinating to watch my oldest daughter dance with a scarf. She has danced for many years in her post-Kindermusik life, so it was no surprise to me to see her move so gracefully.
Nevertheless, I firmly believe (and research will support my belief) that even her Kindermusik experience informs her current dancing abilities, even if she doesn’t remember the specifics of class with me. She’s had many, many years of practicing a variety of movements and learning to express herself through dance, and that started in our living room in New Mexico.
In Kindermusik, we talk about developing the whole child. Watching my older children, I started thinking that maybe “whole child” isn’t just about an education for the present moment—it’s also about the whole of childhood. As we approach Thanksgiving, then, I can definitely say I’m grateful for the opportunities for learning and growth that have come to my family through Kindermusik.
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!
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. . .
Simultaneous action, development, or occurrence. The state of operating or developing according to the same time scale as something else. “Some individuals do not remain in synchrony with the twenty-four-hour day”
–Google Dictionary
(For the similarly named song by The Police, click here.)
In human development terms, synchrony is the dance that happens between babies and caregivers, right around three months of age. In highly technical terms, it’s what makes adults go completely ga-ga when a baby smiles at them—suddenly, we get huge smiles on our faces and we start talking like we forgot all those grammar lessons from fourth grade.
Come into a Sing and Play Kindermusik class and observe the way moms, dads, grandmas and grandpas interact with their babies. Synchrony abounds. It is part of why Kindermusik is about developing the whole child, in this case, social skills.
Kathleen S. Berger, in her human development book, Invitation to the Life Span (2014), writes:
“One study found that those mothers who took longer to bathe, feed, and diaper their infants were also most responsive. Apparently, some parents combine caregiving with emotional play, which takes longer but also allows more synchrony” (pg. 141).
Interestingly the adults are the ones who imitate the babies, not the other way around. This explains why newborn babies don’t elicit the same response from us. They get plenty of oooh’s and aaaah’s, but no peek-a-boo games.
What happens when we don’t react this way, when we don’t give the kids this attention? Ed Tronick, the chief researcher on the still-face technique, shows us (fair warning, it might be really hard not to reach through the computer and give the child some love, but rest assured it doesn’t last long, and ends well):
So, obviously, this is something that comes naturally to us as caregivers, whether or not we’re enrolled in a Kindermusik class. But Kindermusik has given me is a large array of songs that I can sing to help slow me down during those routines and to engage in this responsiveness cycle with my children. I can spontaneously burst into a rendition of “Bubbles,” while I’m bathing them, “I See You,” when doing a peek-a-boo game, or “Little Red Wagon,” when I’m bouncing one of them on my lap waiting for the oil to get changed. And, gratefully, these are songs that I can actually tolerate listening to while we’re driving (unlike Other-CD’s-That-Must-Not-Be-Named).
And, as I have said before, I especially love coming to class and having that time with them there. While I strive for it daily with my kids, it is the one place where I can come and just be truly present with them—no laundry to worry about, homework to get done, or kitchen floors to mop.
All my kids walked out of class with a great earworm—exactly what I wanted!
You may not remember much from your years studying a foreign language in school, but I’d bet you remember a song or two. It’s no secret that music serves as a fantastic vehicle for second language development.
There is a fascinating study by Brandt, Gebrian and Slevic, published in the Frontiers of Psychology journal online by the National Institute of Health that talks about how music and language develop. After examining similarities and dissimilarities of music between cultures and across time, they decide that “ (M)usic is creative play with sound; it arises when sound meets human imagination.”
Isn’t that a great definition? Creative play with sound, mixed with human imagination. Sounds exactly like my daughter’s Kindermusik class!
They write, “speech and music turn out to be closely related” in terms of how the brain processes the sounds. Additionally, when they looked at the great variety of musicality in multiple languages, they concluded that even the pitch of spoken language carries meaning, as when, in English, we turn a sentence into a question just by changing the inflection of our voice: “You’re doing well?”
Importantly, they note that, since a baby is unable to distinguish what parts of speech are unimportant, he or she pays attention to “all of the musical features of speech.” This attention “provides a richer context for language induction.” In fact, the ability to “hear musically” allows us to learn language in the first place!
Here is one of my favorite examples of the musicality of language. Pogo created it (and many others) by taking snippets of sounds from movies and turned them into songs of their own. Everything, from the beatbox in the background, to the phonemes that we imagine into certain lyrics, comes from the varying pitches in people’s voices (though sometimes he includes bits from the soundtrack). My kids enjoy listening to them, too!
Kindermusik’s mission is to develop the whole child. As it is inextricably connected with language development, music gives us a powerful medium to do just that.
The last couple of weeks of my life have been really hard. Not in any life-threatening or debilitating way—I’ve had those weeks (or months or years), and I’d rather take the stress that I’m under right now, thankyouverymuch. Still, a bunch of things have piled on top of me and the background noise of “gotta do more, gotta BE MORE!” is taking its toll. Not that this is something I take joy in admitting, but I’m hoping that in sharing I can connect with the other parents who also feel somewhat overwhelmed, trying not to blow it.
A couple of years ago, I had a life changing experience, and I found myself meeting people who had parenting challenges far greater than my own. When my kids were babies, there were lots of things that worried me. I’ll never forget the moment that my first baby spit up, hours after being home from the hospital. Yes, we called the on-call pediatrician at 11 pm. I hope he got some extra karma points for being patient with us. Still, talking with these parents, I realized that as my kids get bigger the things that I worry about won’t get any easier for me (after all, I sincerely was in a panic that night with my baby!). Instead of the worry about a little bit of spit-up, however, it may become a worry about the consequences of a binge-drinking episode. (Please tell me I’m not the only one who thinks about this from time to time!) Of course, I’ve seen some of my friends deal with big crises with their little ones, so I’m not trying to suggest that our babies can’t be in situations that are deadly or very serious. Just, as I sat with those parents, I realized that the love I have for my kids, and the vulnerability I feel when I realize that those joyful moments are fragile—those emotions aren’t going away any time soon.
Like most parents, I imagine, what I want for my kids is to take care of themselves. I want them to deal with their stress without resorting to activities that will do more harm than good—please, don’t let them think that underage drinking will be the solution to their problems! (Sitting in a cave reading poetry: OK. Smoking a pipe: Not OK) I want my kids to love their bodies so that they eat healthily and exercise. I want them to have lots of practice making small decisions so that, when faced with a choice of getting into a car with a drunk driver, they can predict the consequences of their decisions. And I want for them to know and understand their feelings so that they can deal with them in a way that works best for them, coming to me for help if they need it.
Still, sitting with those parents, I also learned that I can’t give my kids what I don’t have. If I don’t take care of myself, I can’t teach them to take care of themselves. We know that one of the most powerful ways we have of learning, especially as we’re growing, is through observing others. So, if my kids see me indulge in the ice cream rather than go for a run as a way to negotiate some frustration, that’s what they will most likely learn (this part of parenting can really stink at times!). Additionally, if I’m taking care of myself, I will be less likely to cause additional problems for them. I know, for instance, f I’m uptight about some problem I’m having, I’m much more inclined to lose patience with them or yell, shaping their nurturing environment in toxic ways. Finally, if I don’t take care of myself, things could go south in a really serious way—the very last thing I want is for my kids to lose their mom.
So, I woke up this morning with still far too many items on my to-do list. Realistically, I can shift some of them around a bit, and I recognize that in a couple of months some of these deadlines will have passed and my schedule will loosen up. But, through my meditation practice, I’ve also learned that I can tell myself one of two stories. I can keep telling myself that there isn’t enough time, and I can’t do it all, and life will fall apart if I don’t get an A in my class and I’m a failure because I didn’t get to the guitar to practice, and I’ll probably make a fool out of myself next time I play (there you go—the thought patterns of a perfectionist). Or, I can tell myself that I’m using my time as best I can, and that even a getting a B in class means that I’ve passed, and that slowly and surely wins the race, and even if I don’t get everything done, I’m still worthy of love (the thought patterns I’m trying to develop as a recovering perfectionist). When I work on the second script, even though my to-do’s haven’t changed, the way I carry that list does. (Well, “write blog for Kindermusik” is now off the list,” so it’s changed a little bit, anway.)
At any rate, the reason for this blog post is to remind myself that slowing down, being mindful, and taking care of myself need to be at the top of the list today. Everything else will wait. If you’re having one of those days, I challenge you to do the same.
“It is really through the arts that we give form to some of our most powerful experiences of being human. . . I really believe that an education which omits the arts is omitting a major part of what it is that makes us human”—Sir Ken Robinson
Have you seen The Monuments Men? George Clooney directed this film, a great homage to the real-life men who, in World War II, risked their lives in order to preserve the legacy of the worlds’ great artists, the works that Hitler determined to destroy if he could not have them for himself.
The Book Thief touches on this subject, as well. I loved the book, but finally got to see the movie adaptation last weekend (how much did I love Geoffery Rush?). The image of people tossing books onto a burning pyre was powerful, and I couldn’t help but wonder what role this extermination of art and literature had on the devastation of the Holocaust. If the arts help us remain connected with our humanity, what happens in a world without those arts?
People more well-versed than I have written a lot about the importance of arts in education. Check out some of these great insights (yes, I’m a little consumed with Sir Ken Robinson these days, as his paradigm has come up in multiple conversations of late):
There’s an article from edutopia.org that examines what, exactly, is being done currently in schools to revive arts education: here
Dosomething.org has a great list of facts about how important the arts are, and includes suggestions about how teens can get involved: here
The National Endowment for the Arts has a lot of great resources, news, and grant opportunities: here
It’s true, Kindermusik is a high-quality music program that uses all sorts of strategies and techniques to help children learn musical concepts in a developmentally appropriate way. However, it is far more than music education. It is a way of using the arts to help develop the whole child. Raising a child is an amazing, and sometimes very difficult, task. Sometimes it is hard, in the middle of the diapers and cleaning up the messes, to remember that, among the difficulties, there is great joy in raising children. Participating in Kindermusik classes with my children has been a great way for me to “give form . . . to most powerful experiences of being” a parent, and I’m grateful for it.
