Selecting a Musical Instrument for Your Child towards a Better Cognitive Development

You only want your child to learn how to play a musical instrument so that they can hone special talents or you can brag about them more during parties and when you present them to your friends and relatives. These reasons are petty as compared with what can be gained in selecting a musical instrument for your child and allowing them to learn it at their own pace. There are actually cognitive benefits that can be obtained by people who study music.

The author of the study, Keeping Mozart in Mind, Dr. Gordon Shaw, said that through learning music, a person is allowing a window to open that will lead to higher brain function. This is very evident in people of all ages. According to Dr. Shaw, students at the second grade who know how to play the piano scored 27% higher in math subject and other performance tests. In 1997, a study from the laboratory of Dr. Shaw pronounced that for kids in pre-school, spatial-temporal reasoning can be enhanced by going through piano keyboarding lessons for about six months. These kids scored 34% higher when it comes to puzzle solving exams that their contemporaries who did not undergo the same training.

The positive vibes continue long after these kids become adults and enter college. There were proven studies, which found out that most Music majors have higher chances to be admitted into medical school. There was even a report that compared the chances of Music and biochemistry majors of getting admitted into medical school. It was surprising to know that 66% of the students who majored in music got accepted while only 44% of those who are biochemistry majors had the same fate.

It is ideal that you don't expect too much from the process, especially when your kids are very young. At this stage, they must be able to learn how to enjoy everything that they do, including their love for music, without feeling the pressure that people are expecting from them. Your duty here is to convince them to take lessons in any musical instruments of their choice. Let them enjoy everything and discover on their own how this training can help their cognitive development as they get older.

The most important thing that must be obtained through it all is the enjoyment that the kids will experience while learning more about the instruments. This way, they will become more excited and enthusiastic to practice some more until they have mastered the instrument.