Why Learning Music could be Critical to the Lifelong Success of your Child.

The value of teaching a child music is not, so they become a professional musician. It is, so they become resilient to failure. It is an incredible measuring tool for establishing progress on an endless journey of failures and successes. When most children and young adults, and dare I say some adults, are given a complex task, very few people push through to accomplish it. I can remember in high school, when given an assignment, it always seemed overwhelming. Children are still developing many Applied skills for overcoming what one individual might declare a daunting task. When learning an arduous activity like an instrument that involves both the creative and the logical side of the brain, the individual is creating a skill set that can apply to many needed life challenges.

There are many hurdles when learning an instrument, and the learning curve is so slow. If handled correctly, the moment you push through and get past the initial stress /failure is when the actual value of learning an instrument is taught, which is just the first hurdle. For example, making an initial sound for a horn player or woodwind is a massive accomplishment. Now off to the endless task of creating music and developing artistic perspectives. There are constant hurdles to overcome through this process and new plateaus to climb out of, which can take hours to accomplish. Only to climb higher up the learning curve just to be stuck at another plateau. It sounds pretty exhausting; however, what you are teaching yourself is overcoming obstacles, and you get to see results, leading to feelings of accomplishment. Playing an instrument is the constant rebound from failure to success. One week you may not be able to play a piece of music, so you practice and practice, and the following week, you have accomplished what you set out to do. This can become addicting; this can become a lifestyle. Whenever I try something new, my approach is the same way I learned an instrument. Whether it be golfing/ fishing or learning a new computer program, all these things involve a failure to success process. When you have taken on the task of learning an instrument, you will be more than prepared to deal with trying something new. So all these failures eventually add to successes, which is what learning an instrument is truly about.

Now why an instrument? Why can’t this be done with a sport or just in an academic setting? My opinion on all this would be the balance of creativity, logical thinking, and multitasking that you learn when playing an instrument. People who excel in the sports world will learn many incredible skills that apply to other settings. However, being an athlete growing up, I feel there are limitations to sports, and this is my opinion, not facts. Playing sports is a reactionary skill. Predetermined events happen before the game, but decisions are split-second decisions in-game. In most careers in life you are not demanded to make split-second decisions. For me, this just does not correlate enough to other aspects of life, and so instrument wins. There is a debate for creativity in sports, but most would not call it a creative activity. Humans diminish their athletic abilities over the years. If you are even lucky to play sports through high school, you are still so young may not have learned how to transfer some skills you learned on the field to other aspects of Life. While playing an instrument, you can excel throughout your whole Life; there are endless creative ways with music and no boundaries or rules like sports. In my opinion, learning music gives a higher probability of transferring the detailed skills you learn to other aspects of Life because of longevity. Music is considered a language, and you do not have to make the team to know them. Also, the fine motor skills learned on an instrument are more comparable to the average adult profession. In terms of academia, of course, there will be plenty of super successful individuals and inventors that do not touch an instrument. However, they are few and far between, and most are driven by passion or necessity. At the common core of academia, it teaches students to follow, not to lead, so in my opinion, learning music wins.

With this new applied skill, you are now resilient to failure. Maybe you want to learn something new, you can easily take the same approach from learning the instrument to this new venture. You understand the concept of a learning curve and how to enjoy failure. The enjoyment of failure is a true talent.

We Learn Music Together is the only on-demand online learning platform that teaches young kids the fundamentals of music through fun and engaging videos, and lessons that the entire family can participate in!!!