Did you know music has a huge impact on early hearing development? When children listen to music, the sounds and rhythm stimulate their brains. Whether it’s a hum to lull them to sleep or a rhythmic melody on the radio, these musical actions influence their hearing development.
Musical sounds help develop young children’s communication, social, emotional, and cognitive abilities. Toddlers who grow up listening to music from parents and guardians have a better vocabulary, active listening, sensory, and coordination skills.
But how exactly does listening, producing, or singing along to music affect early hearing development? Here are four different ways music develops your child’s hearing regardless of their hearing abilities.
1. Music Promotes Speech Recognition
Children with hearing loss can find it hard to perceive speech sounds in a noisy background, especially if they don’t have hearing aids. By listening to music with different tones and rhythms, children can learn how to separate irrelevant sounds from the primary sound.
Their brains can learn to ignore the softer backup singer and focus on the lead soloist. Similarly, they adjust to filter out background noise when listening to messages in a noisy environment.
2. Music Teaches Active Listening
One of the crucial skills that help people hard of hearing receive messages and communicate better is active listening. When a child is crying, and you cut them short by singing their favourite song, you teach them the art of active listening.
By forgetting what made them cry for a minute to listen to the music or even the beat, their brain develops an active listening trait that will help them pay attention to their surroundings while working through complicated emotions.
3. Music Can Correct Speech and Communication Delays
Nursery rhymes are entertaining for little ones. But rhythmic musical sounds are more than matching intonations and melodies; they enhance speech and communication skills in young children.
Kids have to listen to the teacher carefully and repeat what they’ve said to learn the rhyme. Memorising and repeating lyrics—if only to a beat—can help them develop their reading skills too.
4. Audio-Visual Music Sharpens Speech-Reading Skills
Hard-of-hearing individuals rely heavily on speech-reading (lip-reading) to understand what others are saying. Kids can learn to read lips early as a way to understand a message by repeatedly watching sing-along videos from their favourite cartoon theme songs. These speech-reading skills help kids recognise what someone is telling them, even in a noisy place.
Helping Kids Feel the Beat
Music plays an integral part in early hearing development. Music of all kinds encourages active listening, speech recognition, and communication skills in hard-of-hearing kids. Whether it’s a sing-along video on the TV, basic beats and vibrations, or even musical instruments exposure at a young age is important.
To find out more about hearing aids and music for both children and adults, please get in touch with Paul and the team today.
0113 8730444
Book an appointment with our audiologist