Why Sing To Your Baby?

When I first became a mum I found the whole experience quite overwhelming. And especially the period immediately after my husband went back to work after his 2 weeks paternity leave. Now I was very lucky that my mum lives 10 minutes away from me, so we spent a lot of time with her, but I still had a lot of time just me and the baby, and I remember looking at his beautiful little face and thinking what on earth am I going to do now? How do I fill the time? Do I need to entertain you? How do I do that? In reality for many months all he really wanted to do was eat, sleep and be held close, and as long as I did that he was perfectly happy. But I still wanted to do something with him to connect and bond with him.

One amazing thing parents and carers can do with the children in their care when they are tiny (and when they are toddlers and small children too, but that’s a subject for another day), is to sing to their baby.

You may read those words with absolute dread thinking that you can’t sing or that you don’t like the sound of your voice, but I can tell you with absolute certainty that as far as your baby is concerned you have the most beautiful voice in the world. The people who take care of them mean the world to babies. You are their whole world. You represent comfort, safety and home. Your voice is the most familiar to them and so the most comforting. And if you are a birth parent then your baby has been listening to your voice from long before they were born. So please do sing to your baby.

Singing to your baby is a brilliant activity for bonding with them. I remember singing to my children when holding them in my arms held so we were face to face looking at each other, or lying them on my legs facing me and watching their expression as I sang to them. Sometimes they just listened, sometimes they rewarded me with their gorgeous smiles, sometimes they coo-ed and joined in with the singing (in their own way of course!). You don’t need to buy anything at all to sing with your baby. It is something completely free to do.

Listening to music is an activity that has been proven to exercise pretty much the whole of a person’s brain, added to that it has been proven that listening to new music that you have not heard before develops new connections in your brain – everyone’s brain – and babies brains double in size in their first year so they have loads of new connections they need to develop. Most music will be new to them, so you can sing anything to them and you will be helping them develop new connections in their brain.

Research has shown that there are strong links between understanding and having a good sense of rhythm, and babies developing good language skills, good listening skills, babies being able to pay attention, even good social skills, and singing to your baby is one very early way to start giving your baby that sense of rhythm.

It can be fun. You can sing silly songs with silly words or sounds in. You can sing lively songs and dance around with your baby at the same time. Did I mention that when I sang to my children they sometimes rewarded me with smiles?

So, what should you sing to your baby? The short answer is: anything you want to. You can sing nursery rhymes. You can sing lullabies to calm your baby before bed. You can sing your favourite songs. You can sing that song that is stuck going round in your head? It really doesn’t matter to your baby. If you have slightly older children who may be prone to repeating everything they hear you say, then you might want to be careful with the lyrics in your song, but otherwise chose whatever you want to sing and sing away.

If you want some ideas for nursery rhymes to sing with your baby, look out for my post next week: 12 Nursery Rhymes To Sing With Your Baby. Or my post later on this month: 10 Lullabies to Sing With Your Baby. (I will come back and link to these posts once they are published.)

If you are inspired to sing to your baby after reading this post, I would love to hear how it went, and how your baby reacted.

If you have enjoyed reading my blog post, thank you. I am always looking for ideas for the blog, so would love to hear from you with suggestions for topics you would like me to cover in the future. Also, if you would be interested in supporting me to keep this blog running, buying the books to review here, and supplies to make the DIY instruments, for example, I would be absolutely delighted if you would consider buying me a coffee using the following link: Buy Me A Coffee Thank you!!