Grandchild #4, like many 18 month year olds, has mastered the emphatic “No,” but she communicates it non-verbally. She understands everything said to her, and can even follow a string of directives, yet very little comes out that resembles speech. Similarly, a young child fully immersed in tonalities and meters may take many months before vocal response resembles rhythm or melody. Yet a child with such a rich musical background understands rhythm and tonal and can follow a string of rhythm patterns or melodic segments, just as the child in language. What goes in is far more important than what comes out.
Interestingly, this little child, who concerned her grandmother with her raspy, unarticulated sounds that didn’t resemble speech, responded in rhythm dialogue more than once with a very articulated “bah.” Still, through four days, Grammy didn’t hear sounds sustained on the breath coming from that little voice, except for a cry. Lo and behold, shortly after Grammy was singing at the piano with Grandchild #2, the prettiest little singing voice came out of Grandchild #4. Her little melodic segments had a totally different quality than anything Grammy had heard from the toddler. This little tyke may be demonstrating that rather than music being a language, language is a music.
