Does Music Benefit Children with Learning Disabilities?

Submitted by Hannah Roberts on Sat, 2015-11-21 18:00

As parents of children with learning disabilities, we want the best for them. We want them to succeed and achieve their educational goals.

As a teacher, I have had meetings and conversations with parents where they expressed concern over their child’s participation in “frivolous” classes, such as art, drama and music.

But art, music especially, is advantageous for your child’s overall educational wellbeing.

Stanford University in its 2005 study “musical training helps language processing” discusses that learning a music instrument is useful for language development, especially for children with dyslexia or other types of learning disabilities.

Tips, pointers, ideas

Here are some ways you can incorporate music to enhance their core subjects:

1. Have your child learn their multiplication facts set to music.

2. To enrich history lessons, learn songs from different cultures or ears in history.

3. Use rhythmic music combined with clapping to strengthen reading and fluency.

4. Create raps, chants or songs to help your child remember details.

5. Simply play instrumental music in the background while a child studies to improve focus.

For further information about how music and learning are interrelated please check out the graph below.

Art, music especially, is advantageous for your child’s overall educational wellbeing

Key Takeaways:

1
Musical training helps language processing
2
Musical training strengthens the corpus callosum
3
Listening to music may increase productivity