children responding emotionally to music????

Post Reply New Topic

Hi--I am new to this site and have a few questions...has anyone ever heard of a small child--about 2 years old--late/non-talker--respond very emotionally to classical music? Also, is it generally understood that ALL people with AS were not late talkers? And if a child is a late talker, then they do not likely have AS? thanks for any insight into these questions.

I haven't heard of it but it sounds interesting.My son is diagnosed with Asperger's although he had a significant speech delay(also never went through the babbling stage) and his performance IQ is still higher than his verbal (he may actually be HFA). Asperger's is supposed to have no significant speech delay and higher verbal IQ than performance. When he was 3 or 4 and I was trying to get him to talk the one thing that broke through the wall was I sang everything I said. He started paying attention then.

Oops! Welcome to Wrong Planet!

I believe that all children should be raised with classical music playing in the background.

I have AS and I didn't have a speech delay.
I always responded emotionally to music, even before I could speak. Not only to classical music, though. Actually, I preferred The Beatles and Deep Purple. That was the stuff I wanted to listen to over and over, to my parents' horror. (They didn't mind the music itself, after all, they had bought it, it was more my listening to the same song repetitively a hundred times that freaked them out.)

Now that I think about it, I have to agree. Classical music is more orderly and congruent than other styles out there. I feel a sense of order when I listen to it.

My daughter is on the cusp of being diagnosed officially with AS, and she had a speech delay but not enough to be called "significant" *shrug*

Not classical, but slower music always caused her to cry.

Oh boy do I ever identify with your parents because my daughter was (is) just exactly the same. I don't listen to much classical music so there wasn't much for her to choose from in our album collection. But she had a speech delay and couldn't talk at 2. One day I put on the CD "Sea Change" by Beck. She listened raptly (and silently, she couldn't talk). When it was over, she started crying. So I played it again. Same response. "Sea Change" by Beck became the soundtrack to her life for the next 3 years, till age 5 (she did learn to talk by 3). I didn't mind the music itself (just like your parents, I bought it in the first place) but 3 solid years of the same album did make me grow to hate the album. I felt pretty sure that by age 5, my daughter knew more nuances of that album than Beck himself. Then one day she just moved on and picked something else. She still has musical obsessions but now they are measured in months rather than years and she rotates through a larger playlist.

welcome.

answer 1. yes I have heared of this and myself react greatly to clasical music

anser 2. I think AS combined with other disorders may produce a speech delay

Erk... The idea that classical music is more ordered or structured than other forms of music annoys me to no end. To which others styles of music are you comparing? To which type of classical music are you referring? And what do you mean by order?

Strike the word 'classical' and I completely agree.

The diagnosis doesn't allow for a speech delay, so if your child has one then his real diagnosis should be autism. Many psychiatrists however feel that aspergers sounds better than autism, because of the stigma associated with the word "autism" and therefore give people the better sounding diagnosis.

When i was younger, certain music would make my eyes tear up.

Ok, I'll bite. I won't say that tyhe entire genre of classical music is more orderly than other whole genres because genres are pretty big. But I do think that Bach is particularly orderly. His pieces sound like he was running an algorithm in his head rather than listening for emotional tone (Beethoven, as an example of somebody who went for emotion).

On the other end of the orderliness spectrum you have bebob jazz with its deliberately disorderly solos which force you to listen more closely because your brain can't predict algorithimically what note will come next. Also punk rock and some of the angrier heavy metal which sacrifice order deliberately to make their angry point.

Okay, that is a reasonable argument to make. However, that is very different from saying that classical music is "more orderly" than other forms of music. That's a pretty broad brush, as you have indicated. Music by Karlheinz Stockhausen and John Cage are technically "classical music," and that is probably more "disorderly" than bebop jazz.

Opinions like this stem from professionals who really have no business making these sorts of proclamations. Dr. Sears, for instance, has no basis for suggesting that parents play their children classical music because it is more structured. Presumably there is also a school of thought out there that exposing children to classical music at an early age will somehow make them smarter. This is also a baseless claim.

Bach is structured, but not because it's algorithmic. Serialism is algorithmic, yet I don't think that anyone is suggesting that we subject our children to Schoenberg! Rather, Bach is structured because it is built on established form, rhythm, and swing. So are many forms of dance music, especially reels and jigs. Should we refrain from playing traditional fiddle tunes to our children because it's not classical music? I think not.