The Practice: Music and Early Child Development
Exploring Music for Early Child Development When I grew up, we took music for granted. The town where I grew up provided a district-wide music program for K-12. Prior to entering elementary school, my mother exposed my siblings and me to classical, jazz, Latin American music, and Broadway show tunes. We also learned songs from popular children’s entertainment such as Disney movies. In fact, I don’t recall music ever absent from our home. We listened to, performed, and explored music. Fast forward to 1997 and the publication of Don Campbell’s book The Mozart Effect which brought a shift in consciousness to how we view classical music, in particular, as it relates to emotional, physical, and mental development. Pregnant women introduced their fetuses to Mozart’s violin concertos and mothers played Mozart recordings to jump start their toddlers’ brains. However, the years that followed the book’s publication bro...