Share how you can explain to parents the difference between music for development and music for skill building.

[Meredith Pizzi]

[Kristen McSorley]

Music for development helps support the developmental process. The music complements the natural progression of development and is designed to provide a safe, nurturing environment for children to experience developmental milestones. Music for skill building is more goal-directed and uses the characteristics of music to facilitate specific skills. This use of music is more individualized to meet the child’s specific needs and will be designed to target and support specific skills and their pre-cursors.

[Kelsy Gati]

Music for development is when music is used to aid or accent the natural developmental process. It enhances the skills and milestones that they will already reach by providing a safe environment to explore those natural instincts. Music for skill building is used to create opportunities to learn societal norms and social techniques that are not know as natural milestones but are important for a growing, learning child to be exposed to in a safe supportive environment!

[Anonymous]

Great answers!

[Ann Marie Raddell]

Music for development is the practice of using music to support the natural development of the child. Music for skill building is a targeted effort to teach children skills that will help the child better navigate his/her environment, such as how to interact with others.

[Ashley Carroll]

The difference is in the focus of the music, in other words, the reason behind the music. For development, music is used to encourage and provide opportunity for children to explore and demonstrate developmental skills they are gaining naturally. When it is used in skill building music serves as a conduit to reach proficiency in a particular skill. The music will be more goal-oriented/focused. While those goals may be reached through music for development that is not the focus.

[Laetitia Brundage]

What is fantastic about music is that we can use it both for development and building skills. Development correlates with reaching those natural and more instinctive milestones, such as walking and holding an instrument. Skill building comes from learning those social skills, societal norms, etc. such as saying “hello” to a friend in our greeting song. In music class, we can set up a safe, structured and experimental environment for these these already well-rounded individuals to explore all aspects of their personalities and bodies. Just think of the music as a kind of glue to pull it all together.

[Kristina Rio]

I am so impressed with all of your answers. This can be a tricky question!

[Sarah Szymanowski]

I think of music for development as music experiences for “the whole child.” When I first read this question, I thought of “music for skill building” as the parent who signs up their baby for music class so she’ll be ready to start violin at age 3. We have a lot of that in the DC metro culture. I think there are more didactic approaches to early childhood music (I’m thinking of Jon Feierabend right now) that emphasize importance of early rhythmic skills for the sake of rhythm, early pitch skills for the sake of pitch, etc. The Sprouting Melodies/music therapy in general approach of course addresses these musical goals, but through the lens of whole-child development.

[Belinda Adams]

Music for developmental learning aides and supports children to learn and advance through growth and developmental milestones that they hopefully would meet either way. Music for skill building enhances the ability to learn necessary ‘rules’ and expectations of the world in a safe way. These are things like manners and cooperation… things that aren’t asked about at your annual child check up but things as adults and parents we want our kids and others to know.

[Anonymous]

All of you really gave fantastic answers and when it comes time for you to show how you are unique from other early childhood programs, this will aide you in showing how you are different and what you offer is different from other programs.

[Katy Hutchings]

Music for development uses the music to enhance the development process for young children. The music helps strengthen a child’s language, communication, gross and fine motor skills, and attachment and emotional well being. Music for skill building helps children to work on specific musical skills related to music such as rhythm or melody. Skills can also refer to social skills or “real life” skills such as listening, following directions, being safe, etc.

[Kristina Rowles]

Music for development is used to help meet the general developmental needs of a child or the “whole” child. Music can help the child move through the developmental stages and support them in the process. Music for skill building is more specific to a designated goal of learning something new and is generally done on an individual basis.

[Tiffany Lee]

Tricky question! I think the average person would have no idea. Music can provide a safe, encouraging environment for development. In this case, it would support a child’s overall natural progression through developmental milestones. Music for skill building also provides a safe, exciting environment, however it is much more specific. It can still pertain to developmental milestones, but the experience would be designed to target specific goals, skills, and social norms within the developmental framework rather than just the overall, general developmental process.

[Noelle Larson]

I love reading everyone’s thoughts on this subject and I agree with Kristina that it is a complex question! As many others have said, there is a different emphasis and focus for music activities targeting the holistic development of the child versus the those targeting the specific development of certain skills, whether musical, social, physical, etc.
As Sarah said, music for skill acquisition tends to conjure images perhaps more inline with several goals of music education, in which developing musical proficiency is one of the primary goals. As music therapists, we are certainly qualified to teach musical skills and help clients develop musical proficiency, but our goal is usually to aid the client in social, emotional, physical, cognitive, or spiritual domains. We may teach the same skills but for a different end purpose: we teach and encourage body rhythm like clapping and stamping, not for the sake of the stamping or to make the young child more ready to read music, but to help him experience the joy of his body in music and learn to integrate his senses and express his emotions. Both music for skill building and music for development are very important, but we as music therapists will even use the acquisition of new musical skills to support the child’s overall development.

[Jennifer Whitlow]

Music can be used in many different ways. In early childhood, there are two large ways music can be used, music for development and music for skill building. Music for development, the music is used to aid natural development with a child. Where as music for skill building is more specific in the intention of each intervention.

[Tracy Wanamaker]

Music for development is using music to support and encourage children to explore, practice and demonstrate developmental skills they are gaining naturally. I agree with Sarah – these are musical experiences that are designed for the “whole child”. Music for skill building targets a specific skill and encourages development in that one area. The skills targeted tend to be social skills or specific musical skills.

[Stephanie Harris]

Music for development provides an environment for the child to engage with music in a way that enhances what is already happening in their growing minds and bodies. Music for skill building engages them in a way that targets a particular need area and works specifically on that skill for improvement.

[Vanessa Quirarte]

Music for development supports a child’s natural developmental processes. These process include learning to talk and walk. It offers a safe and nonthreatning environment for a child to explore and discover himself/herself. It also allows parents to see their child’s developmental growth in a safe and inviting environment.

Music for skills building supports the child on specific goal areas. This can include learning how to socialize and follow directions. Like music for development, it offers a child a safe, nonthreatning environment to learn and practice acquired skills. The music experience for skill building is more individualized to meet each child’s needs.

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