Music, confident parenting and children’s literacy skills

Engaging children with music may help the development of their language and reading skills.

Parents and caregivers are often young children’s first teachers and partners in learning about the world and the kind of learning environment parents provide for their children during the early years influences the development of children’s thinking skills and how children perform in school later on (e.g., Lehrl et al., 2020). It’s crucial for parents to create high-quality home learning environments so that young children. In the home environment, children begin developing language and literacy skills through talking to their parents, siblings and others and engaging in reading and other activities that involve the use of language (e.g., Sénéchal & LeFevre, 2002). One way in which parents can provide a high quality “home literacy environment” to support the development of children’s literacy skills is through talking with them and reading books together, but this may not be the only way. Recent work in psychology links children’s music skills with their language skills (e.g., Christiner, 2018) but not all children can learn music so early on in life. Could simply exposing children to music early on help their language and reading skills in any way?

In a recently published study, Liu et al (2024) investigated for a connection between the home literacy environment and the home music environment, and also investigated for a connection between both of these kinds of environments with parents’ self-efficacy (i.e., parents’ confidence with parenting). They reasoned that parents who provided a rich literacy environment for their children would also be more likely to provide their kids with a rich musical environment. They also predicted that parental self-efficacy would be positively associated with more musical exposure to kids.

The authors surveyed 124 English-speaking parents of preschoolers who were between 3–5-years-old from social media and by word of mouth. Most of their respondents were mothers. Parents who participated in the study had to be English-speaking and reside in the U.S. To measure the “home music environment”, parents provided information of how often they shared music with their children and how often they would sing to their children. Liu et al measured 3 aspects of children’s “home literacy environment”. Parents were asked to provide information how often they read with their kids, how much access their kids had to books of any kind, and how often parents engaged in interactive reading like asking children questions about the story as they read, having their children fill in words at the end of a phrase, or doing activities based on the story being read. To measure parents’ self-efficacy, parents were asked to fill out questions using a scale measure which is commonly used by researchers to study parents’ confidence with parenting (Coleman & Karraker, 2003).

Liu et al found that parents who tended to expose their kids to more music also tended to engage in interactive reading more often with their kids, and were especially more likely to ask their kids questions about the story as they read, point out letters and words, or practice rhyming during shared book reading experiences. There wasn’t a relationship between how much parents reported singing to their kids or other aspects of home literacy, but they did find that parents who tended to sing to their kids more often were also more likely to do activities with their kids based on the stories they read during shared reading interactions.

In terms of parents’ confidence with parenting, Liu et al found that parents who had greater confidence tended to be more likely to expose their kids to music, but there wasn’t a relationship between parents’ confidence and how often they sang to their kids. Parents with higher confidence also tended to engage in more shared reading with their kids and use interactive reading techniques more often.

Liu et al were also interested in whether and how familial socioeconomic status, parents’ confidence and the home literacy environment together influenced the home music environment. Through statistical modeling techniques, they found that parents’ confidence and frequency of interactive reading predicted how often children were exposed to music, but socioeconomic status was not a significant predictor.

So what does all of this tell us?

Even if your children are unable to learn how to play instruments, sing or practice music during their very early years, simply exposing your children to music may have a positive association with their literacy skills. It is crucial for children to have access to high-quality early learning environments, and this access can begin right at home! Aside from reading to children, parents can also help the development of their language and reading skills in other ways and one of those ways may be by sharing music the kids — something that young children already love.

What could researchers study next?

There are lots of ways parents engage with children which might help boost their language and reading skills and other thinking skills. I would personally also be interested in learning about whether and how engaging with pretend play may help boost children’s language and reading skills — there is already some research linking pretend play to language skills, so I would be interested in learning about whether it has a causal impact.

References

Christiner, M. (2018). Let the Music Speak: Examining the Relationship Between Music and Language Aptitude in Pre-school Children. In S. M. Reiterer (Ed.), Exploring Language Aptitude: Views from Psychology, the Language Sciences, and Cognitive Neuroscience (pp. 149–166). Springer International Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-91917-1_8

Coleman, P. K., & Karraker, K. H. (2003). Maternal self-efficacy beliefs, competence in parenting, and toddlers’ behavior and developmental status. Infant Mental Health Journal: Infancy and Early Childhood, 24(2), 126–148. https://doi.org/10.1002/imhj.10048

Lehrl, S., Ebert, S., Blaurock, S., Rossbach, H.-G., & Weinert, S. (2020). Long-term and domain-specific relations between the early years home learning environment and students’ academic outcomes in secondary school. School Effectiveness and School Improvement, 31(1), 102–124. https://doi.org/10.1080/09243453.2019.1618346

Liu, T., Gray-Bauer, H., Davison, K. E., & Zuk, J. (2024). Preschoolers’ home music environment relates to their home literacy environment and parental self-efficacy. PLOS ONE, 19(11), e0313218. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0313218

Politimou, N., Stewart, L., Müllensiefen, D., & Franco, F. (2018). Music@Home: A novel instrument to assess the home musical environment in the early years. PLOS ONE, 13(4), e0193819. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0193819

Sénéchal, M., & LeFevre, J.-A. (2002). Parental Involvement in the Development of Children’s Reading Skill: A Five-Year Longitudinal Study. Child Development, 73(2), 445–460. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8624.00417