Parents or guardians, caregivers and institutional educators play major roles in empowering children to be mentally and physically strong by the time they reach adulthood. Even before or after others step in, the role of parents is fundamental.
Good parenting is not about giving ‘freedom of decision making’ to children even when they are 5-10 years old. It is about empowering them lovingly but firmly with knowledge, perspectives and values like discipline, regularity, punctuality, respect towards achievers, appreciation towards benefactors, balancing work and enjoyment that can enable them to develop the ability to assess and analyse situations in a mature and objective manner, anticipate consequences and take appropriate decisions. For this to happen, parents must possess or develop clarity of thought.
Music and Musopathy can play a major role in ensuring a strong, calm, composed and cool mindset in parents, which in turn results in optimising their child’s mental and emotional health and cognitive development. Breath control often translates to body control and mind-control. If infants are taught breath control exercises with Tonation from very early on, most of them can reap the benefits for decades thereafter.
Musopathy as Normal Parenting Aids
Over 99% of people are completely unaware of or severely underestimate the significance of the first 2-3 years of every child. While most parents obviously want to do the best for their children, this lack of awareness of the numerous nuanced aspects of infant upbringing results in a huge chasm between intent and result. The most significant one among these is the subconscious impact of several routine things parents say or do in front of infants, rationalising that the child cannot understand most things. While this is not entirely untrue, it fails to factor in children’s sensitivities to tonal variations and the prolonged exposure to undesirable sounds – and sights too (like audio visual programs). While high quality research is needed in these areas, it is far better for parents to err on the side of caution during the first few years of a child’s life as the smallest of things could have the highest significance in the development of the child’s overall ability and personality.
While the responsibility to maintain good health and mindset is predominantly more for women during pregnancy, the role of the father also becomes significant after child birth in many cases. Now both parents have to make sure that the child is not exposed to toxic tonalities including raised voices by either or both parents. Both parents must make conscious efforts to protect the infant’s aural neural pathways by exposing it to soothing sounds and pleasant conversations. Obviously, a child brought up with a mixture of both toxic and soothing tonalities will have a mixed mindset.
Do-s and Dont-s While Raising Infants
In addition to those listed above, parents must also ensure the following:
TBT in Very Early Childhood
Musopathy TBT is arguably the easiest to teach infants as it combines controlled breathing plus self-generated musical frequency with focus on the sustained sound of “mmm” (Nasal Tonation) or “ooo” (Pursed Lips Tonation). Both of these are naturally organic to children who are yet to learn any language as babies naturally gravitate to humming sounds or sounds with minimally opened lips to soothe themselves. TBT bolsters this natural propensity of infants in a scientific way that is still unselfconscious to the child.
Further, children naturally tend to be influenced most by things that they are exposed to from very early on. Therefore it is easy for parents and guardians to enable most of them to mimic these fundamental TBTs as soon as possible, to potentially shape their long term personalities positively.
Accessibility
The greatest advantage of TBT over other Breathing Techniques like Pranayama is that the steps in TBT are minimal, informal and flexible to organically adapt to the child’s comfort zones. The child will face minimal stress in learning to inhale or hold breath in particular ways, adopt particular postures or focus on particular frequencies during exhalation, whose duration is also not prescriptive. For children who are in a stage of rapid neural growth, TBT can effortlessly aid in brain regulation, speech, emotional control and greater self-awareness.
Advantages of TBT in early childhood (Ages 2-7)
In addition to strengthening their cardiopulmonary system, vocal cords and, there are at least five main benefits for children from breathing techniques, which Tonation augments.
Controlled breath + vocal sound improves coordination between lungs, vocal cords, and mouth muscles are foundational for fluent speech.
Deep breathing, especially with Tonation:
Even 2–3 minutes of parent guided TBT can reset attention before learning activities.
Gradually, if children are made to place their hands on their chest, throat, or belly during Tonation, they can:
This can be especially helpful for children with sensory processing differences.
Tonation breathing teaches children:
These support:
Why It’s Powerful in Early Childhood
Between ages 2–6, children are still learning a lot of things about themselves and about the world at large. TBT will enable them to discover how they can calm their minds and control impulses which also has a positive impact on their physiological health. By developing an awareness of how to regulate voice volume during Tonation, they can also organically improve their tone during speech and prevent abusing their voices. Tonation breathing directly supports these foundational skills in a playful, musical way.
Children Who Benefit Most
Any normally developing child will benefit from early TBT training but it can be especially helpful to:
Suggested Modus Operandi for Parents
It is imperative that parents proactively learn TBT from qualified Musopathists and practice it regularly for their wellbeing. They can organise professional TBT sessions. Those that have successfully completed Musopathy Certificate Courses can themselves teach it to children, especially those between 2 – 7 years (earlier if feasible). Children must be guided for at least 10-15 minutes everyday in a fun manner. They can also be encouraged to keep trying it out by themselves whenever they wish to, irrespective of whether they are standing, sitting, lying down or enjoying a stroll, but especially when they have emotional meltdowns.
Children can be encouraged to have fun by trying out different frequencies (except high pitched ones) and longer durations of exhalation. To add to the fun, parents can occasionally ‘compete’ with the children to see who can stretch out the Tonation longer, using a stop watch, motivating them effortlessly to improve their lung capacity. Needless to say, such competitions should be stopped if the child shows any signs of stress.
These simple steps can also exponentially increase parent-child bonding and lead to better bedtime transitions everyday. It is highly essential for parents to be in regular touch with qualified Musopathists during this important phase of a child’s life.
Applying MANET to enhance Cognitive Abilities of Young Children
MANET can contribute immensely to a growing child’s cognitive and motor skills, as it combines both Rhythms and Mathematics in a singular manner. Scholars have sufficient evidence to assert that musicians are consummate multi-taskers because music performance requires facility in sensory and cognitive domains, combining skills in auditory perception, kinesthetic control, visual perception, pattern recognition, and memory. Many musician-advantages in the neural encoding of sound, auditory perception, and auditory-cognitive skills correlate with their extent of musical training, are not observed in young children just initiating musical training, and differ based on the type of training pursued.
However, every child may not necessarily have musical aptitude and MANET has been specifically designed to even benefit this section. But since certain parts of it involve at least elementary addition and subtraction skills, MANET can be applied to children who have already been taught these.
However, simpler aspects of MANET such as counting time with specific hand and finger gestures can easily be taught to even 2 or 3 year old normals. But it is important for parents to go through highly trained Musopathists who can assess the child’s abilities and propensities and be able to adapt the application on a case by case basis.
Infant Prodigiousness: Extraordinary Parenting
Most people do not realise that a number of prodigious children are as much products of nurture as they are of nature. People tend to attribute extraordinary or even divine causes when they see child prodigies but in many cases, the major credit must go to inspired parents who invested substantial amounts of time, energy, emotion and expertise in uploading vast amounts of knowledge to infants, whose natural abilities enabled them to download, store and access these speedily when required.
Unfortunately a majority of such prodigious talents fall by the wayside mainly because:
Music and Musopathy programs can not only aid the parents in optimising the growth of their prodigious children but also help such children directly in the first few years of their lives which will enable them to maintain their upward mobility for much longer periods.
Musopathy programs for Middle, High School and College Students
Both TBT and MANET are already available to improve attentiveness, focus and memory of students – especially device-addicted ones – and improve their mental strength by helping them relax and manage their stress levels better. These eventually will not only enable them to raise the level of their performances but also prevent anxiety, panic, depression and other disorders.
