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Why Music Is Better Than White Noise for Babies

Music is better than white noise for babies

Everyone loves to watch a sleeping infant, but is white noise for babies the best environment for these peaceful moments?

Research tells us no, and here’s why – your baby’s auditory system is hard at work, and sleep aids like white noise can send it into overdrive.

Our auditory system is the first to develop and the last to stop. It is almost fully developed at 16 weeks in utero. So, when your baby is born, they already have 5 months’ experience in processing sound.

Before we look at why soothing, patterned sounds like music are better than white noise for babies, it’s important to understand how the auditory system works.

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5 Musical Ways to Manage Holiday Meltdowns

A mom uses gentle rocking to comfort her toddler during a meltdown.

Ah, the holidays—a time of rest, joyous family gatherings, and the harmonious sound of…meltdowns.

The reality is that this season often adds stress to families, especially for its youngest members.

Different schedules, new places, travel times, rich foods, family photos, and general overstimulation affect everything from mealtime to bedtime, which can contribute to not-so-merry meltdowns.

While grownups have the ability to command self-control faster, the brain’s pre-frontal cortex (where this function is typically associated) is not fully developed until adulthood. Additionally, relaxation is a learned behavior, which is why trying to reason with a toddler during a tantrum doesn’t usually work.

So, in the midst of holiday chaos, it’s important to gently teach children how to relax. Music and movement are some of the best tools out there to help little ones reset, recoup, and get ready for the next event.

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Inspiration behind the Mother Tongue Lullaby Project

Experts say linguistic diversity is a crucial component to preserving disappearing languages around the world. This video – as well as all the Kindermusik Educators in over 35 countries around the world – inspired the Mother Tongue Lullaby Project.

With this project, we’re hoping to record mothers and fathers from around the world singing their first language lullabies. These soothing songs are one of the first ways we, as children, experience language, comfort, and bonding. Before we could understand the words and their meaning, lullabies could communicate that “music is in the house, all is well. Everything here is safe enough to soothe and sing to you. ”

As you can hear from the hand full of lullabies we’ve already recorded and posted, these lullabies still communicate an unbreakable bond between the parent, or grandparent and child.

If you’re a Kindermusik Educator, a parent, grandparent, or loving uncle, or aunt; or you simply have a favorite lullaby to sing for us in your Mother Tongue language, please let us know. We’d love to record you.

We can record your songs over the phone, and we’ll post the recordings to the project’s sound cloud account, as well as on the project’s tumblr site.