In our home, music rules everything around us. My husband is a musician, I’ve always deeply loved music of all genres. and our children walk around signing all day. Our children are very creative, they will write their own songs, perform covers, and even produce their own little “music” videos. Members and guests of our home are constantly invited to concerts & dance performances that are held in the living room!
Being an “80’s baby” I’ve listened to my fair share of some of the dopest music. My mother jammed out to all of the new dance tracks, and some late 70’s tracks. Mid 80’s was cool because Madonna was getting big, Paula Abdul was hot, and I remember all of the good rock bands that were emerging. By the late 80’s we entered into a musical paradigm shift and Hip Hop was born. My friends and I would do the same exact thing that I see my children doing, we would pretend that we were the stars. I would get on the hood of my moms beat up baby blue car which had cracked vinyl seats, and just sing my little heart out to the tune of the radio. Those of us that were born before the 1990’s tend to brag about our childhood lives, and how we played outside until the street lights came on, we drank water from the hose and most of our families only had one small TV with “bunny ears”. If you were like me, your TV only had 13 channels as well!
Where am I going with this? Well, as I reflect back on my childhood, I remember that cartoons came on two times per day. Once in the morning, before school and once in the afternoon, after school. Afternoon cartoons usually lasted until about 4:00pm because that was when the news would begin to report or some show like Phil Donahue. So as children, we were forced to figure out what we were going to do until it was time to eat dinner. The best way to do that was to go outside. Our neighborhood was our “Twitter” and our front yards were our “Tweets”. A “FourSquare” check in was a bicycle on the front the lawn. Our “Instagram” was a Polaroid picture!
Today, the technology that was created to bring us closer to the things and the people that we love, has desensitized us. We would rather text, than talk, we would rather tweet a picture of our dinner than eat it, we want to put our headphones on rather than bump our boom boxes so that everyone could dance along. We have become so social, yet so introverted.
More and more we read studies on how technology and television are causing depression in children. Just Google those three words and you could read articles for days on this subject. Even cable television has taken a whole new spin. Personally I am not a huge fan of television. In the past when the cost of cable television became too much of a burden to bare, we would go without. At these times, I noticed that my children would fight less, and play more. You see, when there was a TV sitcom to watch, my four children would fight to watch the one that they wanted to see. They were ruthless too! I’m mean, they would fight, tooth & nail, to the point where I’d have to referee a battle and someone would end up crying.
Since we have narrowed down their options, years ago, from 200+ channels to Netflix they spend more time being creative. Not only are they more creative, but they are creative TOGETHER! My daughters choreograph dance routines and music videos to Justina. They get outside and they play, they make their own pretend “Aloe” with mud and they just use their brains!
Back to music, music is a universal language. As a child, listening to music was therapeutic. As an adult it is as well. In the recent past I read an article that states music is being used as therapy for Alzheimer patients. The power of music has the ability to brighten our spirits, get us motivated, wash away tears, or even induce a needed release of them! Music brings us back to good times, and bad, certain songs can bring back an entire year of our past back for a few short minutes! Music therapy is also being used to treat depression in children in addition to helping pre-mature babies thrive.
When all is said and done, music is a blessing. They say music is what feelings sound like. Do you “feel” anymore? [youtube]http://youtu.be/EgNLLelQYwI[/youtube][youtube]http://youtu.be/4qjx2BrrQJg[/youtube]
