Any little child may respond musically one time and not the next, and the level of music skill demonstrated from one response to the next is often inconsistent. You may hear a bit of tuneful singing from a child, and in another instance it is nowhere near tuneful—whether the same day or three weeks later. A child may respond perfectly in rhythm one time, with another response not even close to rhythmic—today or three months later.
The young child’s fledgling musical prowess can be very personal, and a child may be reluctant to share it. Generally, tonal is most intimate, with rhythm more freely offered. Budding self-consciousness may cause a child to withhold musical response, or to respond with less skill than previously demonstrated. A child may sing tunefully until aware that you are listening, and then regress to tonal babble.
The more you keep the focus off of the individual children and off of their individual responses, the more they will deliver musically. Many children clam up when the spotlight is on them or on their response. A child will easily revert to music babble, as anything can threaten the young child’s musical overture—expectations, instructions, power plays, observers, self consciousness, shyness, the thinking mind, concern for “getting it right,” mood, distractions, and any number of other reasons. Even praise can derail the reverie of spontaneous musical response. The young child’s display of competence may be here today, gone tomorrow, but the ongoing occasional appearance of greater skill always demonstrates growth.
The more we can take little children out of themselves and into the music, the more they are apt to spontaneously deliver their best. “Playing music” draws children out of themselves. Little ones engaged in meters and tonalities with puppets, trucks, dolls, or hammers, become lost in play—literally losing themselves and all self-consciousness—even shyness. A child lost in the music itself is most apt to spontaneously deliver at peak performance. That same little child, however, may come back the next week and only babble. Part of the charm of little children and the wonder of their process of music learning is their consistent inconsistency.
