As a growing literature has shed light on associations between cognitive mechanisms for music and language, an important role of rhythm and timing is emerging for individual differences in language skills in children. In this talk we will address: A) how musical rhythm relates to individual differences in spoken grammar traits in children ages 5 to 8; and B) potential neural synchronization by which an overlap in processing rhythm and language might occur. Results in the current study show strong correlations between musical rhythm perception and spoken grammar production, converging with prior work. In addition, we found that individual differences in neural synchronization to the speech envelope (measured with EEG) during passive listening are associated with performance on prosodic and musical rhythm behavioral task performance. Additional EEG data (during musical rhythm beat perception) has also been collected from N = 50 children with typical language development and N = 13 children with grammatical impairments (all children had non-verbal IQ in the normal range); data analysis is underway. In light of these studies and others showing that rhythmic listening can impact grammatical task performance, we will discuss other ongoing translational work that takes first steps towards exploring a causal influence of rhythm on grammar states.