To the Parents of Children Who Groove:

Thanks to you, children are born musical. You dreamed of them, you carried them and you birthed them, and all the while they grew inside you they delighted in the tunes and times you made and moved. They came into the world sounding their own signal, and ever since then they have been making their musical way forward. Because your own life is alive with the musical rhythm of your every breath, and because there is music even in the way of your walk and your talk, you are an important part of their soundscape in which they learn to become more musically expressive and responsive.

Yet it seems that some children become more musical than others. Is it nature or nurture that makes them more musical? Both, most likely. Yet the interest and involvement of parents with their children is a major influence in how musical they become. Musically outstanding individuals tend to have parents who have taken them to lessons, encouraged them in their spurts of musical growth, and stood by them through their plateau periods of daily practice. Often, these parents stay for the lessons, talk with the teacher, and take notes so as to offer advice or ask questions of their children at practice. Few of these parents make their living as music professionals, but they value music as an important part of their own lives, the life of their family, and the development of their children.

Yet parental involvement is so much more than lessons and the all-too-frequent daily practice grind. Parents who recognize the musical nature of their children, and who believe that they become more human through music, may already be doing instinctively what works in making their children more musical. Step into their homes, and there's music sounding— not as background so much as full-frontal sound, live music more than canned sound, with adults and children alike coming and going as participants within the musical fabric of their families. Babies babble the lullabies that they have heard since their first days home from the hospital, toddlers waddle in rhythms they have felt since the dandling days of their infancy, preschoolers play school (and store, and stories as playful dramatic episodes) as they sing songs of a spontaneous nature as well as the family favorites that have become familiar to them. The songs in children's heads come out as audible expressions of who they are, how they feel, what they are doing, and the beats in their bodies are a demonstration of the rhythms that are revving inside them. Parents, grandparents, older siblings, caregivers, and significant others within earshot have led children to a discovery of the music that will be meaningful to them, as they have also passed on to them the message that music is worth making.

In an imperfect world where troubles and tensions are all too real, parents are still there to offer their children the best they can give, the prime positive experiences that have made all the difference to them in their own lives, the life opportunities that they might have once only dreamed but which they now wish to offer as loving recognition of all that children are and can be. Music is life in sonic form, and can go hot-and-cold, from love to joy, sorrow, even peace. The music which parents seek for their children is this manysplendored phenomenon that extends beyond the aural alone to the physical, social, emotional, and spiritual essence of life in motion. As they nurture the musical prospects of their children—at home, in school, at church, temple or shrine, in the neighborhood and out in the community at large, parents provide them with the ultimate gift of music as a way of knowing personal expression and social belonging.

Thanks to parents, children are not only born musical: they are bred to become more musical. Society may run its course in its attempts to snuff the music out of them, too, by prioritizing other experiences and learnings. No matter, though, as children will forever be musical, even when it must simmer inside of them. Yet with parents like you, they can make it to their musical maximum, singing, dancing, playing their way through a balanced life of good health and happiness.

What more can you do to enhance the musical life of children? How do parents keep the music alive in children, help to draw it out of them, support its presence in the system of schools, preschools, after-schools, and other venues where children's development, education, and welfare are the focus of attention? There are ways.

1. Talk—to other parents, to teachers, to administrators, to school board members, to local political representatives. Let them know that you see and hear how music makes a difference in the lives of your children and their friends, that you sense the joy of their creative and communal expressions, and that you understand that their education in music and through music is the logical step forward for making them all that they can be. Parents play critical roles in their children's education and schooling, and your enthusiastic support of musical study will be heard.
2. Write a letter—to the principal, the school board, the superintendent, your local newspaper. Tell it like it is, the plain truth and nothing but, that music is a must in the curricular programs of the school day, from the earliest grades forward, that every child deserves to be able make more of their musical selves through public programs in school and in community settings before and beyond school. Elaborate and prolific prose is not necessary, and even a few sentences can make the point on how musical children move and groove, and what regular musical experiences can do for their dispositions, demeanors, and attitudes.
3. Invite— your friends, relatives, co-workers, and local city councillors to the next open-to-the-public music event put on by the children. Make it a participatory event, too, so that in-between and around a few selections that children may offer can come musical reckonings and beckonings for everyone, where the audience melts away (because no one needs to listen-only") as they become active in the making of music with children, singing, dancing, and playing.
4. Maximize— the music-making in your home, and allow the tunes and grooves to be a continuing stream alongside the daily-doings in which children engage. They can wake up and go to sleep with music, bathe and dress to songs and chants they have learned or been encouraged to create, sing for their supper, and as in days-of-olde, resurrect the vibrant ways of making live music on instruments and "found sound" objects within the household. The exuberance of making music together is reinforcement to you that music is a constant in their lives, and yours.
5. Restore —the music that may have been deleted or cut from the agendae of schools and preschools, in classes, during play periods, at lunchtime and at recess. Because you make music at home with your own children, you have what it takes to bring together a few children from here and there, including yours and "theirs", for drum-song-dance-drama-healing-feeling experiences. Where there are teachers of music, you will want to coordinate efforts and ideas for restoring the music, but when you must go it alone, you will succeed by doing what you have done all along in your home: singing games, action songs, hand-clapping chants, rhythmicking bouts on pots, pans, and homemade drums, and the whole spectrum of moving-to-groove and grooving-tomove possibilities.
6. Seek support— through grants, donations, and corporate sponsorship, for the development of pilot projects in music for children within preschools, in afterschool arrangements, in churches, temples, shrines, and in community centers. Let potential grantors, donors, and sponsors know that the projects you propose are for growing children's musical expression, which, by the way, also spin off into their intellectual, emotional, social, physical, spiritual development. It's fair to say the support for a pilot project frequently makes the project a permanent fixture within institutional arrangements. When the benefits of musical involvement are seen and heard, the word will spread widely.

Time and again, parents are powerful players in the course of their children's musical evolution. It starts in the womb, moves to the crib, the lap, the yard, the neighborhood, and out into the larger community, including school. You have all the data you need to be able to say from first-hand experience that your children bubble along in their merry little lives making music as a means of communicating, expressing their emotional selves, interacting socially, even learning the roles and rules of their society. You can move mountains, making music a constant presence in the public and private programs that are dedicated to your children's education. What you say "counts", and what you do in the name of children's involvement in music will continue onward the trend you initiated in their earliest stages at home as lap babies. You're not about to let go of their playful musical beginnings, thankfully, but are a vital cog in the wheel of their ongoing musical development.

Patricia Campbell