Ages and stages: is that the same child I taught last year? The very young child. (Pedagogy Saturday VI).

Kenneth K. Guilmartin, speaker

The following comments apply, I think, to any age, but especially to children up to age 8 or 9. Why include these older ages in an article about the "very young" child? Because it's important to understand that what goes right or wrong from birth to age 3 or 4 affects everything that comes later.

I think music educators intuitively understand that children can vary a great deal in both their capabilities and their achievements, and we make this understanding concrete as we acquire experience and compare notes with others in our field. But by and large our conclusions are not supported by a tradition of scientific observation and assessment. Unlike pediatricians, we don't have charts of proven developmental norms of ages and stages to show a parent who asks us, "What's a good age to start lessons?" Perhaps we can answer confidently from our experience, but we may tend to rely on anecdotes and highly subjective terms like "ability" and "talent" to explain the variations in children's music development that we observe.

Edwin Gordon and his colleagues in music learning theory have helped greatly by clarifying the distinction between music aptitude and music achievement, and even by providing reliable aptitude tests that, when used properly, help us discern that many children are much more inherently musical than they appear to be. But if you operate from the point of view that all children are musical, and you want to work with any child that comes to you, you don't need to administer aptitude tests. You may, however, find that the ability to shift your orientation periodically is helpful, a shift away from focusing on what your students are accomplishing to what they are experiencing, away from teaching technique, repertoire and skills, to observing how your students perceive, think and learn. This could be called shifting from an instructional orientation to a developmental orientation.

Early childhood music teachers are necessarily fluent in the developmental orientation because, depending on the child and circumstances, direct instruction is just not very practical in the first three to five years of life. Here are some examples of how things go in our world:

Attention: The appearance of disinterest or non-attention is often irrelevant; certainly, it's unreliable as feedback for how well your "lesson" is going. Especially babies, toddlers and even two[-year-old]s are learning everything at once; their attention spans are not so much short as as multidimensional and cyclical. Much of the learning can be unconscious.

Learning styles: Children who "can't sit still" are usually kinesthetic learners--space itself is stimulating, let alone the opportunity offered by space plus music! At younger ages, even requiring such children to sit at all can be developmentally inappropriate. On the other hand, insisting that a visual, auditory, "observer" child get up and dance is equally inappropriate.

Temperaments: It's normal for an extroverted child to participate a lot in class; it's normal for an introverted child to not participate. Both children are likely to continue the classroom activities at home, but in their own unique ways.

Concrete objects: Most children are excited about playing with simple percussion instruments, and some need interaction with an object much more than others to ground their learning. But consider the extroverted, kinesthetic, "mover" child. At first he may rush to get a drum, eagerly bang on it and proudly display it to everyone. But then, as the music develops, he'll become mostly engaged in movement, absent-mindedly holding the drum and beater, or even discarding them entirely.

Play: In music, the early childhood developmental mantra, "Play is a child's work," translates to "Play is a child's practice." True play (versus playing games) isn't play anymore if someone is instructing you!

My teaching orientation first began to shift toward the developmental because of an interest in music therapy. I was doing music and movement work with children diagnosed as developmentally delayed and also with elderly patients with strokes or severely limiting terminal conditions. I had to drop my "music teacher" expectations and switch to making observations, to asking myself, "What's going on with this particular person at this particular moment, and how can I work with that?" I had to become more student-centered than curriculum-centered, more focused on the person I was teaching than what I was trying to teach.

At the same time I was getting more involved in general early childhood education, as well as early childhood music. Preschool teachers and their colleagues in universities taught me that the child-centered teaching orientation they call developmentally appropriate practice is essential because the developmental reality of very young children is so variable from child to child, and mutable within each child from day to day, even moment to moment. This shift in orientation and my understanding of developmental delay were key as, years later, I was evolving the Music Together program with my co-author Lili Levinowitz. The evidence we considered seemed to indicate that, although all children can achieve basic music competence (the ability to sing in tune and in rhythm, and to maintain this accuracy despite shifts in key or tempo) by about age 3 or 4, by far the majority of North American children were not achieving this until age 5 or 6, and many were not achieving it until age 8 or 9--or never! Thus it became apparent that the majority of North American children are developmentally delayed in music from two through five years. This helps explain why an eight-year-old and a four-year-old might be at a similar stage of music development when they come in for lessons, despite the differences in their cognitive, social, emotional and physical development. Sometimes the delay is in a particular domain of learning. For example, the root cause of an eight-year-old who seems hopelessly "tone deaf" but whose rhythmic skills are excellent can usually be traced back to poor models and opportunities for tonal development in early childhood.

I think it's useful to note the difference in tolerance for this two- to five-year delay in music in contrast with, for example, physical or cognitive development. Most parents worry about a developmental delay of two to five months in these areas. They will tend to interpret differences in music development as differences in "talent" or "interest" instead of seeing them as the deprivation of valuable skills achievable by all children.

How can these observations help your teaching? Hopefully, you'll become more interested in actually teaching little ones. It's such a fascinating and inspiring field to work in--and a lot of fun, too! If, however, you just don't feel "called" to actually teach, it's important to be well informed so you can advise parents. Secondly, the more you know about early childhood music development, the more you'll be able to diagnose and remediate the developmental differences you discover in older students. Thirdly, fluency in the developmental orientation is something to cultivate at all levels of teaching. And finally, I think there should be a lot more "early childhood" in all education--couldn't you use a little more play in your practice?

Composer, author and educator Kenneth K. Guilmartin leads the innovative Music Together early childhood music and movement program for the Center for Music and Young Children in Princeton, New Jersey, which he founded in 1985.

Denise A. Schmidt, commentator

Kenneth Guilmartin began his presentation with a group musical activity combining music and movement, based on his background in the Dalcroze method of Eurhythmics; He asked the audience to stand up and sing Jack Be Nimble while performing movements--a clever way to get the group focused on his topic. Stress was placed on the idea of the learning experience beginning with the whole instead of being broken down into parts, and the great importance of affect. (Children learn through play at first.) Adult inclusion into early music training is a crucial part of the success of Guilmartin's method. This allows the parent to understand the musical concepts so that they are able to reinforce these concepts at home.

As educators, we must teach to individual differences in a way that is developmentally correct. This should take place in an environment providing broad, rich musical experiences. We should expose children early on to advanced musical concepts. To support this theory, Guilmartin used the analogy of vocabulary. We speak to young children using words they do not understand at first, but with time and exposure they eventually learn to speak with a full vocabulary. He gave a wonderful example of this concept in action by showing a video of very young children and their caregivers in a group music class. One little boy seemed to not be a part of what was happening at all, but at the end of the lesson he demonstrated through his actions that he understood the concept being taught. However, Guilmartin noted that many children have "developmental delay" in music. By age 3 or 4, children are able to speak in whole paragraphs with fluent expression and a sense of tense. In music, the equivalent would be the ability to sing a song. Some children may be able to get the rhythm correctly but not have a tonal sense of a song. Conversely, other children may have a strong tonal sense but not understand the rhythmic aspect.

Understanding this problem is important when we teach. By age 3, students have 70 percent of the operational vocabulary that they will ever use. Music parallels language learning, but there is a developmental delay of from two to five years in music learning.

Guilmartin gave an interesting description of the stages that very young children follow in music language development. Babies are born as sound-makers first, and the world responds to them. At their first word, the sound play stops, and music language gets truncated as spoken language grows. Music is not stimulated or modeled by the caregivers through sound play. At age 2, the child sings spontaneous songs--little bits of learned songs and speech patterns (just as they do with language). Unfortunately, our response tends to be nonsupportive or non-encouraging, stifling their musical development. Before age 3 or 4, children teach music to themselves. We need to create a "rich, musical stew" and a fertile environment for them by providing group experiences and community musical experiences, and by encouraging and providing musical outlets. The difficulty in nurturing music learning is developmental delay. Guilmartin discussed ideas about accessing and exploring developmental delay. He suggested beginning with improvisation and echo techniques. (You lead; then they lead.)

Guilmartin discussed four informal categories of children's learning styles: the observer child, the doer child, the listener and the talker. He suggested that with talkers, the parents should not talk back, but smile and nod, modeling appropriate behaviors. The concept of music instruction beginning by age 2 1/2 was stressed. Above all, Guilmartin emphasized that we should let go of our expectations, create interesting musical environments and observe what happens. Flexibility is crucial to the teaching approach in good early childhood developmentally appropriate practice.

Denise A. Schmidt is assistant professor of clarinet and instrumental music education at the University of Alabama-Birmingham. Previously, she was clarinet professor and coordinator of the music education program at Mars Hill College.

Kevin Richmond, student commentator

Kenneth Guilmartin spoke of the very young child experiencing and exploring music beginning at birth. He stressed the importance of active participation of parents and caregivers and that music teachers should recognize the value of very early music exposure. Guilmartin encouraged teachers to consider working with small groups of very young children.

Young children learn basic skills, such as walking and talking, through their parents. They are taught informally by the actions and habits of their caregivers. Guilmartin stressed the importance of nurturing children's musical development much in the same way they acquire other basic skills.

In the initial stages of musical development, two aspects are considered: tonal development and rhythmic development.

Children are particularly sensitive to highs and lows, as well as pitch duration. In the first twelve months of life, babies "coo" around a certain pitch center and will change the coo by responding to auxiliary sounds such as music or spoken language. With time, the pitch range becomes wider, single pitches become more distinct and the sound length increases. In the early years of language development, children often "babble" or "improvise" sounds and rhythms. It is important for parents or caregivers to improvise along with them and not necessarily "teach" them how to pronounce words. This improvisation is crucial for musical development, and the parent and teacher must allow the child to take the lead.

Babies begin rhythmic patterns at birth. Researchers have found an infant is able to create and repeat movements, which, although seemingly random to the observer, actually correspond to speech patterns from the caregiver. As with tonal development, gestures become more consistent and longer with time. Within a few years, body movements will match the beat of the music, and singing new or familiar songs will most likely include accurate rhythms.

The parents' duties include frequent initiation and participation of activities at home as well as constant observation. Children will respond differently depending on their learning characteristics. Some children respond in an outward fashion by moving or singing, while others respond by simply observing and listening. Regardless of their reactions, they are assimilating musical information from their role models and will grow and develop with increased familiarity. Frequent and spontaneous music making is the key, and teachers hold the responsibility to stimulate both parents and children to develop musically.

Kevin Richmond is completing a D.M.A. in piano performance at The University of Texas at Austin with Lita Guerra and is coordinator for group piano at the University of Texas at San Antonio.