BS: Sing Before You Can Talk?

Subject: BS: Sing Before You Can Talk?
From: Sleepy Rosie
Date: 11 Feb 09 - 08:12 AM

My Mother always reckoned I was 'singing', ie creating clearly musical sounds in baby nonsense, long before I could talk.

I suspect that such behaviour is quite probably the norm. Though having no kids of my own, I wouldn't really know.

Just wondered if any parents out there have observed similar in their own infants?

Subject: RE: BS: Sing Before You Can Talk?
From: VirginiaTam
Date: 11 Feb 09 - 09:07 AM

My Andie would imitate scales perfectly when she was 10 months. She was singing whole nursery songs before she could construct a full sentence. As a tiny thing she would kick her feet in time with any music she heard.

I had hearing problems and delayed language development. Around 10 or 11 years old I heard a recording of myself and realising I could not carry a tune, refused to sing full stop for several years. I mean I was mortified and this experience informed my first questioning of the whole exixtence of God thing. How could he make me love it so much and want it so much and then deny me? Around 13 or 14 started playing the piano and found that I could sing.

My mom sang to me. I sang to my kids constantly. Did Andie pick it up from me? Was she born with it? Was my ability natural only delayed by developmental problems?

The world may never know.

Subject: RE: BS: Sing Before You Can Talk?
From: Rapparee
Date: 11 Feb 09 - 09:17 AM

Singing, like all music, has beat and repetition. Babies and adults both pick up on that -- remember that the epics and sagas were originally orally transmitted. The internal construction, the rhyme, the meter, all work to make songs and verse easier to remember and to recite/sing.

Think of how many other things dealing with babies are simply repetitions -- even rocking or walking a baby to sleep.