Music, dancing, and playing instruments have been an essential part of our culture for a long time. From the moment babies are born, parents sing to them to calm, appease and engage them. Infant-directed singing focuses the infant’s attention, controls their level of arousal, and eases their suffering.

What most people didn’t know until now is that aside from the rhythm of songs and rhymes ensuring that mothers feel more emotionally connected to their babies, singing to children from a young age has a significant impact on their brain development.

In a recent study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal, researchers said singing to babies’ (lullabies) will improve their social interaction across development, becoming detectable at two months and more pronounced by six months.

Children are born with billions of brain cells, also known as neurons. Over the first year of life, these neurons form connections, and the more these connections are used, the stronger they become. One of the ways to work out and strengthen these connections is music.

In fact, songs with actions in them are especially good because babies can join in with them by moving their body or doing the actions like clapping, or opening and closing their hands, long before they can sing along. They gradually learn to do more complicated actions as they grow and develop.

In the present study, researchers evaluated whether infant-directed singing’s rhythm impacted infants’ visual attention in 56 two-month and 56 six-month-old infants.

Audiovisual (AV) recordings of infant-directed singing were employed. The speed, amplitude, and pitch of nursery rhymes like “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star,” and “Old MacDonald” with naturally occurring variations were performed by amateur singers. A total of nine AV recordings were utilised, with each recording lasting almost 24 seconds.

Eye-tracking technology (ISCAN) was employed to measure infants’ visual scanning. Also, measured was the timing of synchronised responses of the infant and the caregiver as well as extent of newborn singing rhythms synchronising with eye movements.

Infants aged two months and six months exhibited significantly increased eye-looking that was time-locked with the beat of the caregiver singing. Yet, the magnitude of the increase was significantly higher for the six-month-old compared to the two-month-old infants.

Overall, the results showed that infant-directed singing could entrain infants’ gaze to the eyes of the caregivers. This provides a mechanism for infant-directed singing to facilitate social interaction across development, becoming detectable at two months and more pronounced by six months.

Dr Olubukola Salam, a consultant family physician at the University College Hospital, Ibadan in a reaction to the study’s finding said “In our culture, as the mother sings the oriki(their praise), the child calms down. The child will be looking at her face and smiling. Singing their oriki fosters bonding; the child will understand the mummy’s voice and recognise her body odour, too.”

She added “Aside from breastfeeding creating a mother-baby bonding, when the mother holds her baby and keeps talking or singing to him, the baby looks directly into the mother’s eyes, making eye contact. That is why at the daycare centre, once the mother is around, the baby feels that the mum is around because he can sense her presence.”

Dr Gbonubola Abiri, a consultant psychiatrist at the Lagos State Teaching Hospital (LASUTH), said infant directed singing is not only beneficial for young children, but also for babies yet to be born as it is calming and a form of therapy, depending on the type of music.

According to her, even babies while still in their mother’s womb can perceive stimuli such as sound, which is why women can say that when there is a loud noise, “my baby jumps in the stomach” and all of that.

“A lot of the research findings encourage that we sing, read, talk and play music for young children because these interactions are very soothing, calming and very engaging for them as well. It also helps their cognitive, language, and emotional development,” she added

Dr Abiri declared that the calm, soothing voice of a parent either when reading, storytelling or singing to a young child is extremely important in their development as it allows for bounding between parents and children.

“The time that you spend in doing all of these is also a time that is useful in creating memories for that child. As a young child, my father spent time reading to us while my mother took us to bookstores to buy books. It will be very interesting to you that now; I don’t know how much I have spent buying my children books,

“I read to them when they were inside and even without you encouraging them to read, you will find out that they have already learnt the culture that reading, even music, is good. Certainly, our young children are likely to react to whatever they are exposed to, be it singing, music or even reading.”

It does not matter if it is singing, reading or storytelling to a young child; the child doesn’t mind. They just love the fact that they have their mother’s attention and care. They will get very excited when they know it is singing or reading time as it will be that special quality one to one time that will create a stronger bond between you both.

Sade Oguntola