Article Link: http://exchangepress.com/article/music-is-for-everyone/5024836/
Meghan, a mom of twins, watches professional soccer matches on weekends with her children. Afterwards, she often grabs a ball and takes the family to the park to play the game.
“I’m inspired to run around and kick the ball after watching the pros have at it,” she says. But after Meghan and her family watch The Voice, she doesn’t leap up and belt out a song.
“I see those incredible singers and I think, ‘I could never do what they do.’”
Meghan is not alone. Most of us see music as something reserved for a talented few and choose to be music-watchers rather than music-makers. In reality, we are all born with the raw materials to sing and dance, just as we are wired to learn to speak and run.
Every Child Can Learn to Sing and Dance
Music-making is a learned skill that develops over time, through trial and error, with strong environmental support—just like other life skills. Babies are not born speaking. We talk to, with, and around babies, and they begin to babble and play with sounds. Once they start talking, children’s early attempts at language are rife with inaccuracies. We chuckle at a child’s “wrong” words and allow language to develop ...