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 A lullaby
is a proven way of helping babies and children fall asleep. Parents have
always sung their children to sleep. Even animals lull their off-spring
to sleep with special vocalizations. The deep purr of the mother cat has
the effect of lulling her kittens to sleep.
Music is
an emotion-based product of the mind. It affects the deepest structures
in the human brain. The choice of music, therefore, is very important.
Babies respond best to soothing, quiet melodies.
If you play recorded
music for your child, you will find that children prefer Mozart, Brahms,
Debussy, or other soft and gentle classical melodies. If you play the
piano, try playing relaxing pieces at bedtime. Soft classical music has
the effect of focusing the attention of the mind and inducing a deep
state of relaxation and calm. Bach composed his famous Goldberg
Variations for this very purpose.
A recent
series of studies have found that the music of Mozart is especially
conducive to boosting brain power. According to an article in the
journal New Scientist, at the University of Illinois Medical Center,
neurologist John Hughes and a musicologist colleague analyzed hundreds
of compositions by Mozart, Chopin, and fifty-five other composers.
Hughes predicted that sequences repeating regularly every twenty to
thirty seconds may trigger the strongest response in the brain, because
many functions of the central nervous system such as the onset of sleep
and brain wave patterns also occur in thirty-second cycles. Hughes found
that of all the music analyzed, Mozart most often peaks every thirty
seconds.
 It is estimated that Mozart’s music is encoded with this
particular brain pattern because he started composing when he was only
four years old, an age at which he might have best been able to tap into
this inherent neural structure.
The
old-fashioned lullaby, sung by the parent to the child, is still one of
the nicest ways of lulling your child to sleep with music. Parents need
not limit their repertoire to the standard lullabies, such as “Hush
Little Baby, Don’t Say a Word.” A pleasing melody and a soft and gentle
tone are the elements that matter most.
 Singing to your child opens up a
deeply personal level of communication that is magical. It is as
beautiful for the parent as it is for the child. One father told me that
he could still remember the German lullaby that his mother sang to him
every night as he fell asleep, even though he never did learn to speak
German.
It is best
not to think of children as animals that can or should be “trained” or
“conditioned” to perform certain tricks, but as humans we do make
associations between things.
You can help your child associate that
feeling of relaxation, calm, and safety necessary for sleep by singing
or humming the same soothing lullaby each time your child wakes up in
the middle of the night and needs to be lulled back to sleep or when
your infant awakens to nurse. Sing softly to your baby while you nurse,
and your baby will eventually learn to associate your song with the
security and peace that make sleep desirable.
Click on music icon below to
download free "Child Sleep" music for your
children. Hope You enjoy the music too. :)
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