Is My Child Ready for Music Lessons?

Many parents ask, “Is my child ready for music lessons?”. As a music teacher my response is, “Are you ready as a parent to start music lessons?”. We already know from many sources of research and discovery that children respond to music even in the womb and it effects their brain in many positive ways. Most children are ready for private music lessons between ages 3 and 5. As a parent of two children who started private music lessons at age 3 I can honestly say that both of my children were ready, but it was way more work as a parent than I expected.

What you should be asking yourself is if you are ready as a parent to help your child learn music at home through practice. The late Dr. David Royce-Gerry won a Grammy for excellence in the scientific study of music in 2008 (see some of his research here https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/ed1a/a81e6c325145129352e0c19a576519266f38.pdf ). In his research Dr. Gerry discusses that in the womb babies can detect pitch changes at 24 weeks of pregnancy. After babies are born they can understand complex rhythms as young as 9 months and respond to pitch changes on instruments at just 2 months old which most parents don’t even realize. After his initial study had ended I had the pleasure of meeting Dr. Gerry and speaking with him. Although his first study was very small, he was awarded $100k with his Grammy award to continue his work which continues to this day through the Canadian Government. Dr. Gerry shared with me that the original group of music students were thought to have 10x higher cognitive skills on average than the control group of music students. Although they couldn’t make a clear distinction if the music class was the only reason for the increase in cognitive skills it seems it isn’t a coincidence that other studies had similar results.

So, should you get your child into private music lessons at a young age? No one has ever said, “I wish I didn’t know how to play music.”, but we hear so often, “I wish I had learned music as a child.”, or “I wish I hadn’t stopped playing music when I was a kid.” I think we all know the answer to this question.

By David Zagelow (musician, teacher, father, believer in the miracle of music)