50: Music and Your Baby’s Brain with Colleen, Musician and Education Director

This interview is with Colleen McGrath Lilly. The owner and director of Music and Me, a music based early learning program for families with infants and young children.  Colleen earned her BFA in Music Performance with honors from Carnegie Mellon University and her Master's in Music in Opera, Magna Cum Laude, from the Boston Conservatory.

She performed worldwide as an opera singer and has taught all ages and levels of music prior to opening the music and me studio.  As her career progressed, she became increasingly interested in the benefits of music engagement in early childhood, which eventually led her to select the music together curriculum, which she now teaches at her company music.

Colleen is a very proud mother as well to a 10 year old named Marlo, a burgeoning songwriter and performer herself. 

What do we need to know about music and sound during pregnancy? (And do people still put the earphones around their belly and play music like in the movies?) 

Haha, yes, I think people still do that. Whether it's beneficial or not, depends on what stage of development they're doing it in. A fetus develops hearing somewhere between 16 and 20 weeks gestation, but the hearing system isn't really fully developed until somewhere between 25 and 29 weeks. Then beyond that, it's not really fully developed until way into the third trimester, when all of the systems have finished developing. So, it may be beneficial in that third trimester to have some earphones on your belly, but more important than ambient sounds from other places are the sounds of your voice and the voices of the familiar people in your environment.

During the time of functional hearing, a baby becomes very familiar with the repeated sounds in their environment. Most importantly, the sound of their parents (mother and father and/or partner, and other caregivers are in the environment). They can hear and recognize those sound upon birth.

There are studies that show that a baby will orient, from birth, to the sound of a familiar voice in the room (even when other voices are in the room). Regardless of auditory development, I would talk to and sing to your baby the whole way through pregnancy.

You can engage in active conversations with your baby or play music for your baby. Better yet, make music with your own body for your baby, that's really powerful. 

What noises should we be staying away from while pregnant?

It’s important to keep in mind that the environment you are in is the same environment that your baby is in. So if you are in an environment where music is being played at such a volume that it's disturbing you, it's probably disturbing your baby too. There's obviously some filtration of sound because of the amniotic fluid around the baby that protects them, however big bass woofy sounds carry very deeply through your body. You can feel it when you're in a club or at a concert and it’s too loud. So you want to be careful about that. 

Music is an emotional experience as well. So if you go see a scary movie and what gets released into your bloodstream is cortisol, because you're afraid, well your baby's also experiencing that cortisol. That said, if scary movies are what makes you super happy, then I guess they're also getting some of those happy hormones you're experiencing through that as well.

Specifically to music though, I wouldn't say there's any particular music to avoid. In fact, exposure to more genres of music is very powerful. But again, it’s about creating a soothing environment for your growing fetus. So, I would focus more on music that is calming and soothing and certainly not played at a volume where you can actually feel it vibrating through your body. 

After your baby is born, why is music important?

Music is an incredibly enriching experience neurologically for us. Listening to it engages multiple parts of the brain.  Even more parts of the brain are engaged when we're physicalizing music. Meaning, when we sing it or make it with our bodies and voices. That’s extremely powerful. 

In infancy and early childhood, our brain is in the process of neurogenesis, so we're creating more neurons in that phase of development and neuro synapse connections than we ever will again in our lifetime.

At some point later in childhood, our brain goes through a pruning process where it allows those less used synapse connections to go dormant. Our brain wants to focus on honing and perfecting those synapse connections that were most used in this genesis phase. So by using music as a learning tool, repetitively, we're digging deeper those synapse connections, that will allow our brain to hold on to those musical connections. 

From a “life happiness” standpoint, when we sing and when we make music (with other people in particular) we get a release of the best hormones in our bodies (e.g. oxytocin, dopamine and endorphins). Just like when we are held or touched by our parents as an infant. That closeness coupled with music making is an incredible bonding tool and soother. Even as we begin to move away from our parents and into other friendships and into society. Making music communally automatically makes us feel closer to those we are engaging in music with. 

Where language is concerned, music is used quite a bit by speech pathologists for language acquisition both in early childhood or when people have experienced a brain trauma like a stroke. And this makes sense, because if you think about it, music provides a lot of organization around sound. Music further organizes the structure of language for your brain because it's very rhythmically even and structured. There are these recognizable patterns and phrases that often repeat in music which the brain can attach to. 

Kids, children, and babies have brains that are very focused on pattern recognition. Which makes music an incredible tool for aiding them in speech acquisition because of the extra patterning that's happening for them.

What's the difference between listening to prerecorded music and you singing yourself? 

The benefit to listening to music is that your brain's going to light up in some really wonderful ways and you're going to be neurologically stimulated. Hormonally, you're going to get that nice release of endorphins and dopamine and oxytocin. Emotionally you're very benefited just by listening to music.

Now, making music adds a whole other layer of benefits because when we physicalize music and embody it either vocally (by singing) or with an instrument that we play, then our brain lights up even more! And you don't have to be a musician to physicalize music. 

Hearkening back to that innate recognition of the sound of your voice, your child recognizes the sound of your voice from the experience in utero. (If your child is adopted, they very quickly become familiar with the sound of your voice as well.) So by singing to them or by engaging with them, you're teaching so many things. First of all, it's the sound they most love to hear. You're the most important person in their world. It really doesn't matter if you feel like you sing well, or you enjoy the sound of your voice because your child really does and they benefit from it. 

Secondly, as a culture, Americans have tended to overuse recorded devices, and we're missing out on half of the benefit of making music. Music really did not start out to be only for professionals, right? It was something that people did. They didn't have television or radios. They sat around on their front porches and everybody sang something or played something communally and benefited greatly from it.

What I'd love to see culturally is us making music together out loud, and remembering music really is for everyone and not just for professional musicians. Parents come to the studio and say, “I don't want to sing out loud because I don't sing in tune.” or  “I don't dance because I'm not a good dancer.” But if we can let go of our ego a little bit, go ahead and sing out loud, dance and do crazy silly things, then your child probably will acquire the ability to sing in tune that you missed out on from not singing and dancing out loud. 

There is a tiny part of the brain that lights up only with music stimulus. What that says to me is that we are biologically musical beings. The fact that we make music suggests it was selected for evolution.  There's a great benefit to music. We've talked about so many of them, but if you can imagine yourself as a biologically musical being, maybe that gives you a little extra permission to go ahead and make it.

Not all children join in vocally or physically but are still greatly benefiting from music. Can you explain some of the different types of learners?

Absolutely. Children are immersively learning in a very unique way in early childhood and their entire environment is coming at them from all over the place. Through their eyes, ears, and bodies.

For the visual learner, their primary mode of learning is going to be visual (even though the other modalities of learning are still happening for them). That child is going to sit and barely move a muscle through a music class and stare a hole in the action of what's going on. They're just going to be the most focused they could possibly be, and it's exhausting for them. 

Then, one day your child starts to play music class at home or you'll see them doing the motions from a class to a song in the backseat of the car while the music's playing. It's these little moments that you can really see, that oh they were into it. As it, they took it all in and now that they’ve had time to process all that visual input, and are ready to practice out loud and with his body. 

Auditory learners are similar, but they don't even look at the activity. They look bored. They lie on the floor and stare at the ceiling. It's too much to have it coming in visually. They don't move very much either and parents of an primarily auditory learner will tell me, “He doesn't like class. It isn't fun for him”. But they are listening and eventually if they stick with it, the same thing will happen. The child will have processed auditorily everything that came in and they'll start to hear those sounds coming back to them at home. 

The kinesthetic learner, is also does not look like what everybody's imagining music class is going to look like. Parents expect their child to shake the instrument, make some vocalizations and dance. Some kids do, maybe one or two in a class. But a lot of times a kinesthetic (or physical) learner is taking in information mostly physically. They're wandering around the classroom, touching the texture of the wall, exploring somebody's handbag, pulling a pacifier out of somebody else's mouth 😂. A lot of things that don't feel like they're engaged in music class, but every couple of minutes you'll see, they'll turn around and look at somebody in music and they'll bounce up and down or do a dance move or rock side to side because they're in it.

How old is ideal to start music class?

Parents can start singing from pregnancy on at home. And a music class can be started as soon as you are ready to take your newborn baby. The activities that we do in class are very supportive of a very holistic development. Music acquisition follows a trajectory similar to language acquisition. They are hardwired to acquire music and we just have to support it. So just like if you grew up in a Chinese speaking environment, you're going to speak Chinese. If you're in an English speaking environment, you're going to grow up speaking English. If you are in a music making environment from birth, you're going to speak music.

What are the top things you can do to support music exposure at each stage?

Making music at home every single day. 

While pregnant, find those one or two lullabies that you love and sing them to your belly in that third trimester every single day (maybe even keep a gentle beat on your belly). 

Then when your baby is born, they're going to recognize those lullabies. And that's an instant soother because it's your voice. They will already know those songs. It's amazing- when your baby is fussy, sing the lullabies. My favorite trick with fussy babies is to start singing a song that they know really well, and then every time I repeat it, I slow the tempo down.  While singing, I keep a beat on their body and sway at the same time. Then I just slow it down more and more (because we know babies can't regulate their internal bodies and emotions and it’s our job to help them). This is such a good soothing strategy because it incorporates all the things that help them to release the feel good hormones such as holding them, touching them, singing to them, making music with them, etc. It works like a charm. 

And if you do this starting prenatally, it's very Pavlovian. You can start those lullabies and suddenly your child is automatically starting to calm down much faster than they might otherwise. 

Once your baby has some more motor control, get some “kitchen instruments” out. You can buy an instrument kit online, which is fine. They’re fun to have around. But if you have an plastic bowl and a spoon, that's an instrument! You can also put rice in a tiny Tupperware and that's a shaker (like a maraca). 

There are many ways to make instruments at home without spending a lot of money. And then, throw on some music that you both like and jam out! Have an instrument party, follow it up with a family dance party and do that every day. Make that part of your daily experience! It's joyful, it's bonding, and you're physicalizing music. Meaning, you are getting all the benefits with that one activity.

Where can people contact you with questions? Can they contact you?

I do not mind at all, I love talking to people. I’m wild about the benefits of music and early childhood. So I'd be more than happy to talk to anybody about it. 

Find Colleen’s studio and contact here:) Music & Me Website