Thank you, Chris, for the links. Very interesting, although I could not open some of them as they require membership.
I have a speech-delayed child struggling with socialisation and I wonder if you came across any neurological research suggesting that learning to play the piano in early years (my daughter is 4) helps speech, language and social skills development? I tried googling it without much luck. Thank you and apologies if you have already mentioned it somewhere and I missed it.
I would reference a review earlier in the Piano Wizard forum posts with a severely retarded boy whose mom noticed improvement in language comprehension and speech, but when I took your words and did a search, I found something interesting.
http://www.cure-guide.com/Child_Health_Guide/Language_Delays/language_delays.html
In particular look at the “Einstein syndrome” and the characteristics of the families that had those types of delays, and music seems to be a part of that environment.
As a linguistics major, we studied developmental linguistics and there are wide ranges of development rates among children. One area in particular is where there is a native language (mother tongue) and a second language can cause parallel language delays that are concerning, so much so that parents actually stop speaking their native language to “help” the child assimilate and learn the second language, but in fact this is not necessary and kids actually “catch up” at around 7 or 8 with both languages fully fluent. I saw this in my children, and in fact now their “native” language is where they have an accent, because their fluency in English “interferes” with their Portuguese.
All this to say, don’t panic, be proactive, and it looks like music can help the brain and socialization in so many ways that slow speech or not, in should be introduced ANYWAY, but especially if you are interested in helping overcome development delays. You don’t grow a muscle by resting it, you exercise it, and music “exercises” the brain like nothing else we know. The way our video lessons are structured lend to lots of music conversations between parent and child, which can’t hurt, especially as they gain confidence. We did have one child who was dyslexic improve her reading and self confidence dramatically with the program.
I know it won’t “hurt”, in the same way learning 2 languages doesn’t “hurt” a child. I had to be disciplined and patient with my children as they struggled a bit with English not to give up on Portuguese, but now they are beyond fluent, verbal to a fault!
One other thought is that our Academy songs all have lyrics and the kids and parents are invited to sing. Singing is often a great tool for solving all kinds of linguistic inhibitions and obstacles, from stuttering to people with actual brain damage in the linguistic parts of their brain.
As I find other studies directly related I will try and post them, but we have more than enough research in our free report to justify music education for ALL kids, and have seen enough moving testimonials from parents of children with great obstacles not to believe this can help, and perhaps dramatically.
Thanks
Chris
Chris, you are incredible! Reading your reply, I felt like you know much more about us than I mentioned! LM does indeed need to cope with three languages, due to an odd composition of our family, and I do indeed push hard for English. Thank you for the food for thought.
Thank you also for the link. I read about the Einstein Syndrome before, although I did not look at Sowell’s book as such, as I am not sure LM fits the profile, although her visual-spatial skills do seem to be considerably more advanced than her language skills.
The little boy from the PW review you mentioned rocks! Very impressive.
Thank you, Chris, for the profound contribution you have been making to this forum. I will be looking forward to reading more posts from you.
Thanks for the kind words, I am glad this helped. Now that I know you have 3 languages to contend with, I would advise you to reduce your anxiety about the late language development dramatically, it is extremely normal and understandable.
Here is how I think of this process they are going through.
First phase is passive, i.e., they understand far more than they can say. Think of words as “bricks” of information. The more bricks they understand the better. At first all the bricks are the same, let’s say the same color, no matter what language was spoken, and they are attaching meaning to those words. Soon they find that some “things” have multiple words that apply (Water, agua, shui). They attach more words to the same meaning (even within a language there are multiple ways to describe something).
They imitate sounds, watching carefully the faces (visual feedback very important in them learning to speak) and get positive responses. Perhaps Grandma understands only Chinese, and responds to the child imitating words in Chinese, positive response, interaction, and perhaps getting some water (shui). The child might try it again with dad, but it does not work, only “water” works with him, and now the child begins to notice that certain people only understand certain “colored” bricks of information. They can feel that certain words “sound” or “feel” like Chinese/Grandma words, others feel like English/Daddy words, and they begin to segment their vocabulary.
Understand at this point they have 2 or 3 words for every meaning they learn! They start to sort these things, but it is very mysterious, as word order, blending of words, time of interaction all are different.
At a certain point however, they realize that not only does Grandma “like” certain colored bricks, she doesn’t understand other colored bricks, and one day spontaneously the child “helps” grandma in a conversation when daddy speaks of water, the child tells grandma very helpfully “that means shui!”. They begin finally to speak, having finally figured out that there are different sets of bricks that go with different people, and some people understand only some of the bricks, others don’t. IF there is a language that EVERYONE in the household understands, that (in order to simplify) becomes their spoken language of preference. They UNDERSTAND Chinese and Portuguese, but speak only English (IF YOU LET THEM).
Here is the challenge. To this day my wife insists that the children speak to her in Portuguese (if they want to please her or eat, or get a ride, or ask a question), in other words, Portuguese is mandatory in our house. Because we live in the states, English is everywhere, the media, school, their cousins, friends, etc., but we actively promote their native (mother) tongue to keep them both bilingual and bicultural. This pays HUGE dividends when their cousins visit, or we go to Brazil, and they now have approximately TWICE the vocabulary of most kids their age, and they know that there is no “one” way or “one” culture.
Grammar sorts itself out, with kind of constant word order confusions, but accents are very slight if at all. Some odd expressions come through unfiltered translated literally from the other language, but this just makes us laugh. They have a great ear for other languages, and like I said, they OVER communicate.
So, passive vocabulary first, all just “words”, differentiation of different “flavors” or “colors” of words, then tentative experiments to test “theories” (Does shui mean “water”?), then using only certain “flavor” words with certain people, and then actually translating for some of those people, and then trying to find a common denominator language that everyone understands to simplify their speaking task. If this is not possible, or not allowed, they just learn two or three languages, not just one, but realize they are doing 2 or 3 times the work of a one language household child, and so it will take a bit to sort it all out.
Here is the most important part. They DO “sort it all out” and then they are bi-lingual, or even tri-lingual, and fluent. Their minds are much more versatile, they have multiple “communication strategies” because they needed them.
Hope this helps,
Chris
Thank you, Chris, for your support! You are very inspirational. I hope my daughter overcomes her challenges and gets to the same stage as your children. I have to say, that despite her limited vocabulary, she has figured out her three colour “language bricks” and quite often after she has said something to me in Russian (as simple a statement as it may be), she would “translate” it in Catalan for her dad. :biggrin:
Apologies to everyone for diverting this topic. More on the subject, I have found this short article, which suggests that even drumming can increase your IQ:
Great article, rhythm is the root of all music, and having studied very complex rhythms from Brazil and Africa, I can tell you they are amazing “puzzles” as to how they fit together, and the coordination and variation in real time are very challenging. I mentioned in another post that I think Indian Classical music rivals the great contrapuntal work of Bach in complexity and richness, I feel the same about African rhythms, especially cultures like Ghana, their depth complexity is astonishing. In Brazil I studied very traditional African religious rhythms, (from Nigeria mostly) used to induce trance, and there is a moment when you are playing that you “hear” another player/rhythm/part that is NOT there. It is spooky, like in your peripheral vision or hearing, and if you focus or look for who is playing that part (it felt like a door opened and someone else joined) then it disappears, like a rainbow disappears with you go look for the end of it. When I stopped and asked “What was that?” the other drummers just laughed, that was for them the spirit drummer that joins them when they get it right. Try writing THAT rhythm part down for your thesis. . . .
Just on a personal note, I love South African and Brazilian music because they combine great Western music traditions of harmony with great African traditions of rhythm. Jazz, Rock and Roll, R and B of course do that as well, and so they form the basis of most pop music around the world. Asian music traditions, from Chinese instrument, Indian ragas, Arabic melodies, Javanese orchestras, have such idiosyncratic or unique cultural cues that they don’t transfer as well, but they are all very rich in their own ways. But they all have rhythm and drumming. A great base, and remember, the piano is a percussion instrument!
Thanks
Chris
Very interesting! I have been playing classical and relaxation music CDs to LM as background music during her play time. I might look into getting a drum CD too!
Here is a link to some interesting auditory illusions - http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn13355-music-special-five-great-auditory-illusions-.html
Chris.
I have just listened to the first one, it is quite an experience! Thanks, Chris1.