Positive music can calm the child

Abstract

Music has played an important role in all cultures from time immemorial. In general music can be described as a conscious organization of sounds (Storr, 1992).Traditionally, music has been used for various purposes like communication, offered as prayers to god, in the war fields, in sports, express grief or sadness, in agricultural practices and for entertainment. It is believed that music is more powerful because, it has the capacity to communicate feelings and experiences beyond those expressed in words. Thus, music is capable of evoking strong emotions (Sidorenko, 2000; Zhu et al., 2006; Koelsch, 2010) and facilitating the expression of complex feelings such as fear and longing (Ready, 2010). From the other perspective, Music has therapeutic effects and it could be used in our day to day lives beneficially, right from the early ages. Recent researches suggest that in addition to its use as a means of communication, music is associated with health benefits such as restoring the body's harmony and soothing the troubled psyche (Sidorenko, 2000; Zhu et al., 2006; Meymandi, 2009; Tabarro et al., 2010).The influence of music is not restricted to adults but also extends early into life starting from the foetal stage. The earliest form of human exposure to music is maternal singing of lullabies and play songs to babies. Lullabies are generally low in pitch and slow in tempo whereas, play songs are highly rhythmic and high in pitch. The use of such songs has waned and disappeared over the years and are now restricted to school rhymes. Though music is still widely used for entertainment or musical learning, how far the benefits of music have been reaped remains a question in the current scenario.Many researchers have established the beneficial relation between music and stress, emotions, intelligence, memory and acquisition of musical abilities. The current study tries to use the relation between music and emotions as an aid to parenting, especially for young mothers. Taking care of infants becomes stressful both physically and mentally when one is new to parenting. The demands of the infants keep the mothers occupied throughout with less time to spare for other activities and adding to their stress. The primary mode of communication of an infant is crying. In situations of potential threat, danger, illness, or distress, infants experience physical and psychological arousal exceeding levels that they can modulate independently. As a result, they depend on their mothers (or primary caregivers) to respond to emotional cues in a manner that recaptures their emotional equilibrium (Sroufe, 1996). Such sensitive responsiveness is pivotal to the successful regulation of infants' emotional state and to the formation of secure attachments (Cassidy, 1994). The mothers differ in their ability to perceive and respond to emotionally salient cues and become stressed out in trying to pacify these children either because the infants' needs cannot be understood easily or pacifying them becomes a difficult task. Each mother eventually acquires a unique technique to pacify her child, for e.g. rocking, patting the child, swinging the child in her arms, singing, etc. But when these techniques have to be continuously employed for every demand of the child, it may become physically stressful for the mother. If these mothers had additional support to help them pacify the child, it could help in significantly reducing the stress of parenting in the initial years. This study aims to find if music could be used as a universal means to pacify children. Here, I do not mean to say music can be a total substitute to mother's efforts; rather it can be a supplement in quickening the process and reducing the matemal/parenting stress to a great degree. Scientific evidence may revive the use of lullabies and play songs that were prevalent in the yester years and additional benefits of early exposure to music can also be reaped. This study intends to provide a scientific base to whether music can be beneficial to young mothers as a means to pacify their babies. …