Disclaimer: This is transcribed using AI. Expect (funny) errors.
Mindy Peterson: [00:00:00] I’m Mindy Peterson, and this is Enhance Life with Music, where we explore the practical ways music transforms everyday life – health, happiness, and beyond. When it comes to music education in the developed world, have we made something deeply human unnecessarily complicated? Somewhere along the way, music shifted from something that we do instinctively, joyfully together to something we think we need training, talent or permission to access. We’ve put certain kinds of music on a pedestal, and in the process, many parents have inadvertently stepped back quietly, thinking, I’m not musical enough. But what if that belief is costing our kids something profound? What if, during the most critical years of brain development, we’re missing out on one of the most powerful and natural tools for building connection, creativity, language, and resilience. And what if the solution isn’t more lessons, more structure, or more expertise, but actually less? My guest today joins me from Paris. Joan Koenig is an American born musician, educator, in-demand speaker, and author of the book The Musical Child, which was designated by The Washington Post as a must read for parents. Joan is a Juilliard graduate whose research and innovative work have earned her and her Paris music schools a solid reputation among music cognition experts. Joan’s integrative approach to early music experience has shifted conventional thinking about literacy, confidence, empathy and collaboration in young children. Welcome to Enhance Life with Music, Joan.
Joan Koenig: [00:02:03] Thank you Mindy. I’m thrilled to be here. This is, of course, my favorite topic.
Mindy Peterson: [00:02:09] I am so intrigued by the recurring theme in your book and in your work. And that’s that in the Western world, the developed world, classical music has become the gold standard for music training. And one unintended consequence of that is that more and more parents feel like they’re not qualified to engage musically with their children. There’s less and less spontaneous music making, and that’s been replaced by this sense that music is only something that experts do. Can you unpack for us why that mindset is so concerning?
Joan Koenig: [00:02:47] Absolutely. First of all, I think that, um, everybody listening to us will probably agree that the creation of Western art, music. So Western classical music is one of the most extraordinary achievements of of humankind. Uh. It’s extraordinary. But along the road, something funny happened, which is that we need to keep in mind that music, as with language, is actually an oral tradition. So we were speaking long before that first little cuneiform alphabet showed up. And we were singing and communicating through music long before our little friend Guido D’arezzo in the 10th century created the music staves. So it’s rather odd that it’s accepted generally in the in the developed world that children only learn to write when they’re 6 or 7 because they already speak fluently. So why is it that somehow through the advent of classical music, which has become extraordinary in sophistication, you imagine the number of notes on a page to write down one of those last Beethoven quartets. It’s extraordinary. But the problem is that music needs to be learned and experienced with children in the same way that language is. And when you take away that initial oral fluency and then you ask them to read, it is the same thing as asking them to read when they actually cannot speak fluently.
Mindy Peterson: [00:04:18] That’s a really interesting comparison that you make, which I I’ve never thought about it like that, but it’s like sending kids to school and teaching them how to read and write and feeling that you can’t speak to them until they’re able to read and write. Absolutely. And it’s, it’s so it’s so backward from how we do it. And it seems so intuitive that we speak to children, we talk to them and in our own speech when they’re babies is very musical. And we could have a whole episode on that. And I have and we’ll link to that in the show notes. But yes, we speak to children and then once they’re fluent speaking, We expect them to learn how to read and write, but it’s completely backward with music.
Joan Koenig: [00:05:02] Absolutely. And in fact, we need to keep in mind that children are learning language from the moment they’re born. And actually, technically in the last trimester of pregnancy, their auditory system is completely developed. So we speak to children all the time. Some families sing to them, but we rarely think of how much natural musical ability they they have that we’re ignoring when they’re when they’re tiny. And then we suddenly expect them to, at age six, go to a music school and start to learn music. It’s just completely backwards. But we also need to keep in mind that, um, in many areas of the world, I’m personally familiar with the Hindustani music tradition in India. I lived there for three months and worked with Hindustani musicians, and it is one of the most sophisticated musical forms in the world. And there is no written. There’s nothing written. It’s all about training. So I’ve been quite fascinated by watching how I have to say it seems limitless. You can. The more you propose to very young children, certain concepts that seem maybe quite sophisticated, like major or minor, or even, uh, learning to identify pitch with no reference if it’s done in a fun and engaging way.
Joan Koenig: [00:06:19] If this is doh doh doh doh doh doh me no. If you do that 3 or 4 times when the child hears, they’ll sing doh domino. I say it’s the same thing as um. If you tell a child something is red. This is an entire abstraction. He’s depending on you to give him a word for that color he sees. But for him, it’s an entire abstraction. So we’re, we’re losing this moment of having extraordinary aural development long before they can learn to read music. And you can put in place a musical ear pulsation long before they’re ready to read. And as a result, I like to say you’re creating a relationship to music which is incredibly natural. And when someone is a natural musician, this means that I like to say, when I can hear your song and you can hear my song, we can sing together. This is why you sometimes see, um, folk musicians or non-classical musicians who or jazz musicians hearing a tune and saying, okay, let’s go. Um, and being able to join in. And I met so many classical musicians who, if there’s not a score in front of them, they are honestly terrified.
Mindy Peterson: [00:07:36] That would be me. You mentioned that there is a specific window, a period of heightened sensitivity for development of both language and musicality and this real, natural, organic way that you’re talking about. What age do you consider that to be?
Joan Koenig: [00:07:52] Uh, this in terms of language, this is not my not my opinion. It’s actually documented by science. We know that if a child has not been exposed sufficiently to language or is having a language delay, if this goes on beyond the age of 6 or 7, they will probably carry a language delay or a slight difficulty their entire lives. We we know that children who were, um, you know, some of these wild stories of the child who was lost in a forest and had no language exposure. It’s very hard to recuperate when you get past the age of 6 or 7. And obviously, a lot of musicians who begin their musical training after the age of 6 or 7. But what I’m seeing is that in the same way that we develop a completely natural rapport with language, we master difficult syntax, complicated grammar, and sometimes in many languages, it’s because everything orally is happening before the age of 6 or 7. So if we give.
Mindy Peterson: [00:08:50] So would you say that window of sensitivity is from birth to age 6 or 7.
Joan Koenig: [00:08:55] Yes. And I think that with. Okay, what I see is that music. Children who are given the opportunity to have a natural singing, dancing, and to some degree ear training and instrumental training or playing around, I would say when they have that opportunity before the age of 6 or 7, you see a different kind of musicality that I find more natural a lot of times much better pitch recognition. And again, it’s not to say everybody wants to say my child has perfect pitch. Um, it’s, that’s not the goal. The goal is again, to that a child be able to hear a melody and be able to transcribe that, to note names and even to, um, playing on an instrument. And I often say that for, for us, I feel like if I can sing bom bom bom bom bom, and the child will think for a moment and then sing Sal Dormido and then maybe go to the piano.
Joan Koenig: [00:09:51] So Do. Mi-re. Do.
Joan Koenig: [00:09:53] And and if a five year old can do that. I feel like we’ve done our job. Because if you think of a number of things that are going on in that little mind and even body that will allow them to do this, and this I see happening much more before the age of seven.
Mindy Peterson: [00:10:08] Well, I totally believe that my kids went to a Spanish immersion elementary school, and I totally saw how intuitive it was for them at that age to just pick up not only the words, but also the vocal inflections. I had a neighbor at the time who was from Mexico, and she just marveled at the kid’s accent or lack of accent, I guess I should say. And the school was very intentional about getting native speakers as interns, as teachers whenever possible. So I do feel like it’s so intuitively picked up by kids at that age. In your book, I love how you point out there are few universals in this world, but among them are our love for children and our love of music. And you also say that music can be a powerful parental ally during the challenging child rearing years. Why is that? Talk about some of the neuroscience that supports the benefits of early musical engagement. You you’ve talked about how there’s over 30 years of scientific research that has not yet trickled down into our homes, into our schools. What are some of the most compelling findings that parents should know about?
Joan Koenig: [00:11:22] Well, it is true. It’s it’s incredibly exciting. The field of music, cognition. So studying how music is actually processed in our brains and bodies and, and what it is beyond just, I would say entertainment, which somehow I think it can be relegated in the last, um, probably the last century. The idea is that it’s sort of just about pleasure and entertainment, but it turns out After that, they. We have actually shared circuits in our brains that treat music and language. And. For example, when a child can’t seem to tap in rhythm, when everybody else is doing a doom, doom.
Joan Koenig: [00:12:02] Doom, doom bar.
Joan Koenig: [00:12:03] And you’ve got one child who’s doing tomb tomb. But okay, he’s being labeled often as being unmusical. It’s so far from the truth. The fact is that there are certain processes in his brain that are not quite hitting, uh, hitting the mark. And so as a result, rhythm training is actually being used for problems of dyslexia. So one of the, I think one of the exciting things about understanding how music works is that we have to remember that music and language are so close together. There’s rhythm and melody and language, and if you take out the rhythm and melody language you have, this is language. It’s not very fun. So the more I like to say, the more a child is involved in very active music making and learning to synchronize himself to other people, learning to hear that this is a, you know, a W, you know, a tum tum. So you go from two to 1 to 2 to when they can really distinguish this. This means that their ability to identify syllables and words will be greatly enhanced when they understand the most basic concepts of rhythm. For example, a whole note is a big long four beat note. And if you do something where they’re experiencing in their body as being rolling back and forth with each other, and then they cut it in two and they’ve got two half note, half note. This means that you’re working with proportions and numeration, but through the body.
Mindy Peterson: [00:13:33] I love how you connect that. What you just said to a child’s ability to understand mathematical concepts, multiplication, division, proportions, things like that. I hadn’t heard it described in that way until I read that in your book. And that was really intriguing.
Joan Koenig: [00:13:49] It is. And it’s, um, it’s interesting because France is a country that is considered to be very poor in its math instruction. And we have a Fields Medal winner who’s quite an eccentric mathematician. And he says that math is taught in much to an abstract manner in France. And I find it this is so spot on, because we’ll have parents come in and say, my child can count to 100. And so I’ll say, okay, can you jump in the air three times? Little Marie or whatever your name is, and the child can often not jump in the air three times, which means they have memorized things syllabically, but they have no idea what it means. So the.
Mindy Peterson: [00:14:31] Got.
Joan Koenig: [00:14:31] It with rhythm and its relationship to math. It’s not because you’re good in music that you’re good in math, which is one of those funny neural myths. But the fact is that you can’t experience rhythm and music without it being in your body, which means that counting to two. Your body knows what one two feels like and this just can be multiplied. And I do believe that this kind of hands on rhythm workout you can do with children creates a pyramid with which later mathematical concepts can be experienced with great ease.
Mindy Peterson: [00:15:04] I’m guessing you see quite a big difference within the schools in your music schools as they go off to school and start learning mathematical concepts. I’m guessing there’s a big difference between how quickly and intuitively they pick those up. Compared to students who have not gone through your music schools. Do you hear much feedback from parents about that?
Joan Koenig: [00:15:23] Well, actually, we are now a full fledged primary school. So we have we we have a conservatory, which is after school. And then we also have a full fledged school where children have a large amount of music and dance and art during the week. But I will say that one of the things that parents are constantly saying is that the children who have gone through the baby music programs, They have a different rapport to concentration and a kind of, um, analysis. They seem to be able to connect dots better. And these are children who were with us in early childhood music and then for whatever reason, lived somewhere else in the world. Um, the parents are all saying that they definitely see a stability in the child’s ability to analyze and connect seemingly unrelated subjects.
Mindy Peterson: [00:16:13] Interesting. Well, I know in your book, you talk about how studies have shown that creative students. Okay, I’ll read this. Students identified as creatively gifted but not intellectually gifted, consistently achieved more as adults than the intellectually gifted. And some of those achievements included patented inventions, designing clothes, computer programs, business models, building a home, but also pure personal satisfaction. So that was really interesting that it’s not we keep being tethered to this IQ model where we’re so focused on IQ and really creativity and imagination are so much more important to happiness and success throughout the entire life. So that was really interesting. You mentioned the connection between music and mathematics, the connection between music and literacy, reading, dyslexia, things like that. Your book also talks about music’s impact on empathy, memory, social skills, confidence, collaboration, but also physical coordination, uh, self motivation. So there’s so many things that music does address. You do a great job of touching on them in your book, in your book, a lot of times you use the word the term musicking, and that’s spelled MUSICKING instead of music education. Talk about that term and why you use it. What does that shift in language open up for parents?
Joan Koenig: [00:17:50] Uh, I think it’s, um, it’s a word that has been used in the music cognition world quite a lot. And I love it because I can’t stand the idea that when I talk about music in a child’s life, the parents, a lot of parents will say, yes, my child goes to, uh, takes music lessons and we don’t have the same, we don’t say, we say cooking, playing, painting, building, but we don’t say music. And the word actually does exist. I just prefer it because, um, once again, I, if I had to choose between a beautiful musical moment, that might happen, not even with a professional musician, but a relative who comes in and brings their guitar into the home and has the entire family singing and dancing. That, to me, is going to be a much more important moment. And that’s the Musicking moment, as opposed to that Saturday morning music class, uh, where the child might not be fully engaged.
Mindy Peterson: [00:18:48] And it’s the both and both of them have benefits. Both of them are important. We’ve kind of lost the one and we want to bring that back.
Joan Koenig: [00:18:58] Absolutely.
Mindy Peterson: [00:18:58] You talk about you talk about music, scribbling talk, explain to listeners what you mean by that and why it’s so developmentally important.
Joan Koenig: [00:19:08] Yeah. It’s, um, again, I think it’s, um, I think this is actually a bit linked to your first question, which was we have the gold standard for music lessons is now classical music. So if you compare that to the fact that in every home in the world, parents are going to give crayons and papers to their children, and the children will draw according to their stage and development, something that is completely abstract or something that’s beginning to look like a human being. And no matter what it is, the parents will say, oh, that’s wonderful. So in fact, the child is creating something on their own with whatever tools they have, whatever motor skills they have. And yet, very few parents give this opportunity to children. Just put them in front of a keyboard, or even put a guitar on the floor and allow them to play around with it. And what we see, and I call this musical scribbling because the child is just it’s the same thing as playing with a crayon and a and a piece of paper. They’re creating something musically with whatever skills they have. And what’s fascinating about it is that we see exactly all the inherited knowledge that we as Homo sapiens have. And I just want to give you an example. I can remember this little three year old was playing around with the keyboard, and his mom filmed it and he was here, down here. And he said.
Joan Koenig: [00:20:29] He said, those are the elephants.
Joan Koenig: [00:20:33] And then he started doing something like this. He said, those are the ghosts. And then he said, and here.
Joan Koenig: [00:20:42] The fairies.
Joan Koenig: [00:20:44] So in fact, he’s reproducing this ancestral knowledge, which is that the bigger, lower sounds generally belong to bigger, more dangerous animals. And the little high pitched sounds, smaller sounds belong to less threatening animals. So I just find it extraordinary. It’s like watching the brain of a three year old recite create musically what he’s inherited from his ancestors. It’s extraordinary. And they do.
Mindy Peterson: [00:21:12] It’s a very experiential way of learning and developing and growing, as opposed to just being instructed or learning by rote.
Joan Koenig: [00:21:20] And when you sit down and improvise with a child, one of the fun things we do is you say you can play any key and you’re in the white keys, for example. And so it’s mostly if you’re thinking white keys, you’re thinking C major. So the teacher’s playing something. And the child is. And when you get ready to do a cadence, they will end with you and often will wander back down to the do the sea. But if you change it to D minor, same white keys, Dorian mode, the child will give a comment that something. They’ll say, that’s sad. But the funny thing is that when they wander back at the end of their little improv, they wander back to the. They wandered instinctively back down to the D as opposed to the sea. So I think that when you allow the child to have this, um, this experience creating music, you’re opening up a whole awareness in them that not everything is written in front of you. It things come from me. And given that one of the few things we know about the 21st century, uh, and what children will be living in. I think one of the few things people agree upon is that children are going to need to be creative and adaptive adults and 100%. And creativity doesn’t just it’s not just an expression of something that’s innately in there. It can be favored or not according to how you educate a child. And for me, having children improvise from the very beginning, from the time they’re two year olds, you should see the expression on their faces when they’re playing on little bells, quite simply, and the teacher pianist is playing next to them when they hear something that’s very beautiful, because the teacher is following them, of course, but no matter what, you see it in their faces, this joy, they have created something. And it’s beautiful. And I really think that’s a spark of a flame. We need to light more now than ever before.
Mindy Peterson: [00:23:30] Yeah. You point out in the book how we, well, improvising is basically musical scribbling. And you point out how we improvise all the time in our lives, whether we’re in the kitchen throwing some ingredients together or we’re just trying to come up with an excuse for why we’ve been late again. So we improvise all the time. Improvising is just something that’s unplanned. It’s spontaneous. We come up with it on the go in the moment, and yet we have this intimidation about musical improvising and feel like only the experts in jazz are able to do that, when really we do this all the time in every other area. So I love that way. You describe it as musical scribbling because it just makes it more accessible, less threatening, less intimidating. So love that. I have heard a lot of parents say, and I’m wondering what you would say to parents like this, parents who worry that if they just let their kid play around and musically scribble, as you put it, on a musical instrument, whether it’s a piano or a stringed instrument or anything else, they worry, oh, if I let my kid do that without formal lessons. They’re going to develop bad habits that need to be unlearned. What would you say to those parents who worry about their kids exploring instruments freely without formal lessons?
Joan Koenig: [00:24:47] I think it’s very important to distinguish between, um, these musical scribbling moments for me are things that can happen at home, encourage the child to experiment, to find things. But, um, obviously there is a moment when you can’t learn a musical instrument without dedicated instruction. So there is, of course, a moment at which the child can be taking piano lessons or violin lessons or whatever. But I like to think that ideally in every lesson, there should be 5 or 10 minutes of a moment when the child can just try playing around and improvising beyond what the little pieces that they’re learning. And sometimes when this happens, we see, for example, with string instruments, we see children experimenting way beyond first position on the violin. They will just automatically kind of Whoa! Whoosh! Up something they wouldn’t do because their little piece they’re learning is only in the first position on the violin.
Mindy Peterson: [00:25:43] Uh. Huh.
Joan Koenig: [00:25:44] But it’s. This is the fine line to travel. If a child is interested in playing an instrument, they will need instrument lessons. But I believe that if they already feel confident in their ability to make music, and if they feel an attraction to making music with other people. I do believe that music classes should always contain a social element. Get children playing together very early on, the teacher at the. At the least, the teacher should be playing with them so that the children understand the power of making music together. But I think that they will much more readily accept the drudgery of technique if they understand where they’re going. And I think I speak from experience because I started the piano when I was five. And, um, I, I loved, I would go home and learn the little pieces quite quickly. And then I would actually, I remember I would I improvised a lot on the piano, but I was willing to do whatever work possible just because the result was so exciting.
Mindy Peterson: [00:26:44] Mhm. Sure. One thing I liked to make a distinction between when I was teaching was the difference between playing the piano and practicing the piano for parents. So these were kids who were not necessarily early childhood. They were maybe in elementary school, high school. And there were certain times where, yes, form is important and learning the correct music is important. We call that practicing playing. I saw something different. Playing is just doing whatever brings you joy in whatever way you want to engage in it. And that’s important too, like make time for both. So I think that’s one way that can it can be approached as well. Once kids do get to the age where they’re maybe in formal lessons. One thing I want to go back to, to that I just remembered and don’t want to forget to bring up is you Something came to mind when you were talking about the child playing the low notes of the piano and comparing that to elephants, and then the higher notes. And that was maybe the fairies. And it reminded me of a story that you share in the book, and I love all those real life stories that you share from your work with these young kids. But one of them was a child who was about five years old and made a comment about some music that was being played, minor music in the minor mode and said, this music sounds kind of sad, and yet I’m smiling. And, and that was a great opportunity to explain the concept of nostalgia. And I thought, wow, what a great example in real life of a child developing emotional skills and social skills just through that experience of musical engagement.
Joan Koenig: [00:28:30] Absolutely. And I think that most adults who ever had the experience of singing in a choir, or playing in a band, or even just going to a concert that they absolutely love? And once again, for me, there’s no hierarchy. To me, if somebody goes to a concert of the cure or, um, I don’t know who or is going to a Philharmonia concert, to me it doesn’t matter. It matters their emotional experience in that moment. It’s so powerful. And this is something I’m a little bit concerned about today, because I think that we’re many people are aware of a problem of concentration, of isolation, of children, losing certain communication skills. And Jonathan Haidt has made it very, very clear statement with his book, The Anxious Generation. And when you look at what he’s depicting with accuracy and brilliance, I’m grateful to him for the movement that he’s brought on, meaning that a lot of governments are Banning cell phones. But if you look at what music is bringing to children and then adolescents as well, you can’t make music with someone without being incredibly in tune to them. You know that moment when the end of a string quartet and you see every single member of the quartet having that little tiny, tiny pause because it’s the last note and everybody seems to breathe together. If they weren’t physically aware of each other emotionally and on every level, it’s very it’s visceral. They couldn’t do that together. And it’s this this very unspoken communication that I think that we we’re seeing the effects of the smartphones. Um, this is having on children and adolescents ability to communicate.
Mindy Peterson: [00:30:21] Um, I love how you said we have an antidote for the anxious generation. And it’s the musical generation. And this book is so practical. If listeners are listening to this and thinking, this makes sense, I’d love to learn more about this. Maybe for your students, maybe for your own children, maybe for your grandchildren, whatever littles are in your life. I love how practical your book is. There’s QR codes sprinkled throughout the book so that people can just scan that and listen to musical examples. If if readers do play an instrument, there’s scores, musical scores included in the appendix so they can play them. If you have no musical background whatsoever, this book is totally for you as well. There’s really easy natural, practical games and just ways to include the wonder of music in your children’s lives and do that together and have those shared musical moments. And a lot of it is music and movement. So love how how practical that is. And over and over in your book you say no musical training is needed for this. No musical background is needed for this, and I also love how you point out that cost does not have to be an obstacle here. We all have the most versatile music instruments in the world, our bodies and our voices. Anybody can sing, anybody can accompany themselves with clapping and stomping. And so if we really pay attention to what the scientific research is showing, we really don’t need to purchase anything. So if you want to and you have the resources to do that, great, go for it. But cost does not have to be an obstacle here.
Joan Koenig: [00:32:09] You can do frankly, um, if you purchase a small, decently tuned xylophone. And I’m thinking of one I ordered from a German company and it costs €12. So let’s say it’s probably a whopping $14. Um, with that little xylophone, you can do incredibly, um, pertinent ear training and singing with your child. It doesn’t. It’s not a question of cost. I almost feel as though, um, sometimes in very developed countries, parents would rather buy the expensive thing and discharge themselves of their own responsibility.
Mindy Peterson: [00:32:46] Where absolutely.
Joan Koenig: [00:32:47] Uh, what your child wants is to make music with you. And I think you asked something about, um, what would engaging with a very young child look like? And I, and I have to say, I was doing this with, I have a ten month old, ten month old grandchild. Oh, and it is so fun. She’s there wiping her hands on the table. And when we do something like, wow, wow, wow, uh, or I copy her when she hears me copying her, the look in her eyes, she she has said something and I’ve understood her. So this very beginning communication non-verbal, which will lead to language. Um, and when we do it together again. The look in her eyes. Oh my God, we just did this together. And you’ll see often very naturally in simple things like call and response. You know what? The child will do something similar to that. And it’s interesting because there are so many videos on YouTube of babies and diapers rocking away to Freddie Mercury’s call and response things during his concerts. And they are they are grooving with Freddie. And it’s, uh, that’s the example. You can just play that kind of game like, whoa. And that baby’s going to do something similar.
Mindy Peterson: [00:34:11] Well, and I love in the book how you talk about, you say to parents, use the music you enjoy. You point out that example of the father who’s like, I’m really trying to do musical engagement with my child. But this kid music that I’m listening to is just pure torture. And you’re like, what music do you like? And he said, Dolly Parton and you’re like, throw Dolly on.
Joan Koenig: [00:34:33] Use that ring on Dolly.
Mindy Peterson: [00:34:37] What are some signs that a young child might already be engaging musically, even if the parents aren’t recognizing it as such? What are some signs parents should look for?
Joan Koenig: [00:34:48] Um, I think one of the first ones is synchronization. So the actual ability to be doing the same thing at the same time. Even the simple song, you know, when you’re happy and you know it, clap your hands. Are most children do that? I mean, we are a musical species. That’s my belief. I think Picasso said, we’re born artists and we unlearn it. I think in some ways we’re born musicians, and we also unlearn it. In a society where music is no longer brought in as an oral tradition, but rather this gold standard of music education before the ear is in place. So I think that most parents will see their children spontaneously clapping with them, making songs together. But one of the most important things for parents, again, is don’t even worry if you don’t sing in tune. Your child doesn’t care. And there’s all these moments when you can be in the car or having a bath. And if you have a song that you like to sing or you’re making one up, that’s the song that your child is going to love the most and you’re doing it together. And if you can include their name in the lyrics. Believe me, this absolutely sparks their interest and makes it their their own song.
Mindy Peterson: [00:36:05] Yeah. Well, I love how what you just said gives listeners some really concrete ideas of what they can do just to start. Is there anything else you want to say to the parent or grandparent or teacher who is loving this information? There maybe feeling unsure about where to start? Is there one simple thing that they could do today while they’re waiting for your book to arrive that they’re going to order after this conversation. What’s one one simple thing they could do today?
Joan Koenig: [00:36:32] Uh, well, um, one of the things that I always like to suggest, um, make a song about your child and if possible, you want to have an ingredient, first of all, their name. And the second thing is you want to have a rhythmic element that will allow the child to anchor and to anticipate what’s going to happen. So I thought I’d use an example everybody can do it’s Mary Had a Little Lamb. Parents always tell me certain things are difficult. Getting the child to brush their teeth, put their shoes on, and so on. So I thought, this is a good example. Everybody can sing Mary Had a Little Lamb. Right. But let’s imagine we’re making it about brushing the teeth. So we want the child to brush their teeth, but we also want them to be able to synchronize with it. So it could be something like this. Emma loves to brush her teeth, brush brush, brush brush brush, brush. M loves to brush her teeth until they’re nice and clean. And the brush, brush, brush. You’re going to see this synchronized movement and the Emma is going to anticipate when that happens. And she’ll probably start doing it before. So you’re setting up this whole anticipation reward moment. And then of course, you can start using it to put on their shoes to put on the coat, whatever. And I have to tell you a funny anecdote is I was interviewing a lot of different editors, um, when the book, my agent first proposed the book and one of the editors, I could tell she didn’t believe me about making the song for her grandchild. And I spoke to her the following. It was a Friday, and I spoke to her the following Monday and she said, I can’t believe it. All my child wants to hear is the song I made all my Grandchildren wants to hear is the song I made about them.
Mindy Peterson: [00:38:18] Oh wow. So when you say she didn’t believe you, she didn’t believe it was that easy or she didn’t believe it would really have an impact.
Joan Koenig: [00:38:25] I think both.
Mindy Peterson: [00:38:26] Okay. Well, the other thing I love about that example is children. Once they understand and grasp that song, they’ll also have an idea of how long it will last to brush their teeth. So if they’re not real crazy about brushing their teeth, it will make it more fun. But they also know once the song is over, I’m going to be done. And maybe if it’s too quick, maybe it’s like, okay, the first time is the upper teeth, and the second time is the lower teeth, you know, something like that. So they know this isn’t an an interminable amount of time. I’m going to have to sit here and have my teeth brushed. They know. How long do you expect it to last?
Joan Koenig: [00:39:01] Absolutely. But but what’s what’s really funny is some parents have told me that the problem is the opposite is they like the song so much they stop. So they start brushing their teeth for 35 minutes.
Mindy Peterson: [00:39:11] Oh, maybe they could follow that up immediately with a second song. That’s something they do want their kids to do long term, like the Clean Up Your Room song or something like that.
Joan Koenig: [00:39:22] Oh yes, we have a tidy up song and the parents are all asking for it because it’s the moment when the children arrange the instruments in their music class. But the parents are saying, the only way I can get them to clean up their room is to sing the tidy up song.
Mindy Peterson: [00:39:34] Oh wow.
Joan Koenig: [00:39:35] So this is, I really think that we we are we’re sitting on a little goldmine here of better relationships with young children. No shouting because music serves, as I like to say, it’s kind of an invisible force field that brings people into its energy. And it is such a powerful ally when children are very young, when they get older, in terms of their interpersonal communication, it’s a gold mine. We have we have everything we need to help children at various stages in their lives. We just have to rethink the equation a little bit.
Mindy Peterson: [00:40:13] Love that. Well, as you know, I usually ask my guests to close out our conversation with a musical ending, a coda, and that tip about creating a song with and for Your child was the perfect coda. The musical tool that people can use. So I’ll let that be our coda, and I’ll just close things out by telling listeners, get your hands on this book. If you have littles in your life, it’s fabulous. The full title is The Musical Child Using the power of music to raise children who are happy, healthy, and whole. There will be a link in the show notes, and I’ll just close this out with a quote that I loved from the book. In the book you say, to successfully prepare our children for life in the 21st century, we will need to nurture qualities such as curiosity, imagination, intuition, empathy, creative entrepreneurship, and most of all, resilience. Musical practice in early childhood develops all of the above and more. Research has shown that musical practice in early childhood is beneficial not only for mental acuity, but for social and emotional development as well. Music is not just a hobby, a pleasant pastime. It is an integral part of what makes us happy, healthy, and whole. Indeed, if we want to do one thing to help our children develop into emotionally, socially, intellectually, and creatively competent human beings, we should start the musical conversation. The earlier the better. So I’ll just close with that wonderful quote.
Joan Koenig: [00:41:52] Thank you. Mindy. I have to I have to say, I think I’m repeating myself. I can’t believe I wrote that five years ago because I’m saying the same thing. And I want to say it even louder today. I do want to add that we have a partnership of all places with an educational center in Uruguay, and they have our programs going in Uruguay. So if there are schools that are interested, I feel so strongly about this that I don’t want cost to be a problem. I would really like to see these kind of programs anywhere as much as possible, because I really do think that we need to prepare children slightly differently for their future.
Mindy Peterson: [00:42:25] So the program in Uruguay, is that sort of a replication of what you’re doing in your schools in Paris?
Joan Koenig: [00:42:30] Exactly. They’ve been trained now to do basic baby musicking for steps. So they’ve the teachers have become trained to do the program up through age seven.
Mindy Peterson: [00:42:39] So is there some kind of training that you offer? If a school or an individual would like to start one of those schools based on your your research and what you’re doing?
Joan Koenig: [00:42:50] Absolutely. Yeah. There’s a whole training program with all the materials and it’s sometimes people come to Paris. In this case, we actually went to Uruguay two different times to do it. But it’s interesting. It’s, it’s so exciting to see it happening even in another language. And the teachers there are so happy. I think I could tell at the beginning, I’m not sure they believed that they would see what I told them they would see with two year olds. And they came back to me after having done it for a full year and saying, we can’t believe it, but it works.
Mindy Peterson: [00:43:20] Wow. The information on that training is that on your personal website John koenig.com. Is that on your school website? Where can listeners find more information on the training?
Joan Koenig: [00:43:33] Yeah, I’m afraid it’s a little bit not anywhere visibly enough yet, but if people sent out an email to either info@icloud.com or John at dot com, we’ll get back to them about how it could work.
Mindy Peterson: [00:43:46] Got it, got it. I’ll make sure that I include those email links in the show notes.
Joan Koenig: [00:43:51] It’s a work in progress, and I, but I feel I feel very determined to finish off that process. And I’m sure, you know, creative people have the hardest time with organizational skills.
Mindy Peterson: [00:44:04] Yeah, sure.
Joan Koenig: [00:44:05] I’m working with some great people who are helping me download all the creative ideas, because organization is just not my strong point.
Mindy Peterson: [00:44:13] Sure. Well, great to know yourself, know where your strengths are, and where other people can fill in with their strengths.
Joan Koenig: [00:44:19] Absolutely.
Transcribed by Sonix.ai