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Community Corner

Today More Than Ever Your Children Need Piano Lessons

When I was a kid  I wasn't kept busy by a barrage of text messages or Facebook posts. I was forced to create my own fun.  Today, when I see my granddaughter amusing herself for hours with her phone or iPad,  I cannot help but wondering if this is healthy for her brain. I think not.


To counteract the constant over-stimulation rampant in today’s society parents should be looking for ways to increase positive cognitive stimulation.  Brain functions required during piano lessons, for example, are an excellent way to induce valuable stimulation as they require a wide range of disciplines to produce a single note on the keyboard.


Consequently, I was intrigued by Nicholas Carr's recent book, “Shallow”. Carr's hypothesis is that our perpetual online existence is rewiring our minds, replacing deep thought with information overload, and overruling attentiveness with a steady stream of interruptions and distractions.  For ammunition he cites a UCLA study that suggests our “working memory” --- the contents of our consciousness at any one time --- is becoming so overloaded that our short-term  thoughts cannot make the transition to our long-term memory. And Carr is not alone in his thinking.

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Dimitri Christakis, at the University of Washington in Seattle, recently discovered that ADHD is ten times more common today than  twenty years ago.  And he believes that environmental factors are contributing to this dramatic increase. He hypothesized that “prolonged exposure to rapid change during critical periods of brain development ...preconditions the mind to expect high levels of stimulation”. He also found that the more cognitive stimulation children received the less likely they were to experience attention issues in school.


Armed with this information, what can we as parents do to minimize the negative effects of computer, video games and television on our children?. We should encourage cognitive stimulation activities.

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Because music lessons are an excellent antidote for the Internet-numbing effects on our young children’s brains, I encourage parents to counteract this trend and include music lessons of any kind in their children’s broad array of activities.


This is a synopsis of a longer article to read my complete article please visit my website http://http://shorelineartandmusic.com/.
Richard M. Milgram, Bachelor of Music, Master of Music, is a long-time Branford resident, a professional teacher, a professional musician and a state-certified, state-approved music educator of all instruments and voice (singing).
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