From the first lullabies sung to our newborn, to the high school marching band (or garage rock band), music can enormously enrich the lives of our children. Early experience with music can prepare our kids for a lifetime of joy in sounds, of mental stimulation, and the rich social connections that come with making music with others. Praying together in church, especially, is enhanced when children are able to participate actively in singing liturgical hymnody, and such early participation is one of the best ways to ensure their connection with the church as adults.

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Reading about the Mozart effect, the purported increase of intelligence that research shows to be related to early exposure to classical music, we may overlook the critical fact that exposure to all different kinds of music can contribute to the mental and emotional development of our children. Like so many aspects of good parenting, this process begins with a commitment of time spent with our kids.

The first steps toward giving children the gift of musical experience come when we sing to them in the first few years of their life. A musical upbringing starts with parents who can be uninhibited enough to sing. There are very few parents who do not do ridiculous things to capture the attention of their very young children. We use our voices in all kinds of funny ways, we babble with our own personal style of baby talk, we make sounds that imitate machines and animals. Frequently repeated nursery rhymes, humble as these are, can be a delightful exploration of sound for our kids (and for us). There is a good reason these modest ditties have remained popular over generations. Singing to our very young kids is just an extension of these universal invitations to enter the world of sound and speech which parents extend to their kids.

Just as our own reading to our children is very different from playing them a book on CD, our own singing engages our little ones much more than the perfection of a professional recording. Nonsense syllables, “sung” to wildly uninhibited “tunes” we make up on the spot can be a terrific way to engage a very young child with sound. Playing these sound games—singing high and low, loud and soft, slow and fast, exploiting the humor of surprise and contrast—we can strengthen our connection with our kids, and their connection with music.

We will want to share some of our favorite recordings with our very young children. Just as kids enjoy a familiar story repeated endlessly and don’t constantly crave new stories, a few beloved recordings will call to them and their parents to be enjoyed again and again. Singing along with these is a great way to keep the recordings from becoming a kind of background noise for child and parents when we are listening. The point is not to sing so perfectly that we blend completely with the recorded sound. What we want to do is to convey our enthusiasm for the music we are hearing together.

If we ourselves play a musical instrument, we will play for our kids and find that they are fascinated by being close to the source of the sounds we are making. Some instruments, especially keyboard instruments, are easy enough for the smallest kids to try out on their own. If we do not play a musical instrument ourselves, we can at least take our children to concerts designed for young people, and we can let them try either toy versions of instruments or those owned by friends. In any case, giving the child the chance to be close to a musical instrument being played, and the opportunity to make some noise himself or herself, is usually more valuable than seeing a fine live performance from afar.