With our Holiday Session registration starting this week, I am thinking about how the holidays present a great time for families to establish their own traditions and rituals. Rituals are so important to children; they give structure to time and place, create opportunities for predictability, give children a sense of security, help them move emotionally from one place to another, create connections, and provide identity and belonging. In essence, rituals are a foundation stone of children’s growth and development.
One of the most important rituals we can establish in our families is singing nightly bedtime lullabies. According to new research, millennial parents are not singing lullabies to their babies these days. A poll from the Lullaby Trust found that just over one-third of new parents with babies and small children sing lullabies at bedtime. Not only are 66% of millennial parents missing out on the unique bonding opportunity provided with this ancient bedtime ritual, but many studies have also shown that singing to babies keeps them calm and helps them sleep almost two times longer than simply talking to them. Also reported in the Lullaby Project, studies have shown that singing lullabies to babies helps their educational and emotional well-being later in life.
Don’t even try to say that you “can’t sing.” Studies show that the positive effects of lullaby singing to babies and toddlers at night are not diminished or improved by the quality of the singing voice. Remember, YOU are their favorite voice in the world!
Music Together® always includes at least two lullabies (sometimes more) in each collection. In the FLUTE collection, we have the beautiful Italian lullaby, Ninna Nanna Calabrese, as well as All the Pretty Little Horses. Any song can be a lullaby if you slow it down! Think of the theme song to Friends. Slow it down – I’ll be there for you… - and it’s a lullaby!
Tonight, after turning down the lights, start rocking and singing with your littles. If it’s new to you, stick with it and let it evolve into your family’s own unique ritual. We think you will be glad you did!
One of the best parts of singing lullabies at night is making them our own. Have you ever tried changing the words to a lullaby, making the song just for your little one? We changed the words for our daughter and this became a bedtime ritual song for her:
Hushabye - Don’t you cry
Go to sleep my little Allie
When you wake you shall have
Oatmeal and blueberries
Some juice too - we’ll play peek a boo
But first you need to close those eyelids
Go to sleep my little Allie!
Put it in your calendar and set a notification for the Novant Health Thanksgiving Day Parade on November 23rd! The parade will start off at 9th Street at 9:00 am and will march south on Tryon Street to Stonewall Street. This year’s performance area will be located right in front of the Duke Energy building.
A spectacle of sight and sound, the Novant Health Thanksgiving Day Parade is a Charlotte tradition with six decades of history behind it, growing to its impressive reputation as the fourth largest of its kind in the country and the biggest in the Southeast. In 2018, the event drew 110,000 live spectators and 1.5 million household viewers via broadcast. Entertainment brought a "Mile of Smiles" to parade-goers in the form of 13 marching bands, eight larger-than-life balloons, 17 floats, the Seed and Feed Marching Abominable (Atlanta, Georgia) and performances by Harvey Cummings and Renee Rapp.