Á tous mes amis. . .

Á tous mes amis. What? "To all my friends." In French. Even though I had years of high school French and a year of college French, that is not how I know that phrase. I only know that phrase because it is in a song on a children's CD of French songs. I truly remember very little of my book study of the language. I can, however, sing the entire CD of little French songs for children. . . that is because I listened to it several thousand times. In the car. In the living room. While nursing my firstborn child. . . I had this idea that maybe the little French songs CD would someday lead to a multi-lingual kid. Didn't work. But I do know those little songs by heart.

Our brains learn language from listening. Music is a language. Dr. Suzuki called his method the mother tongue approach. The main point is that ALL children learn their language. All children can also learn the language of music, particularly when they are exposed to it during the developmental period when they are learning their own spoken language.

Please put on the listening for your children, especially Books 1 and 2. I am generally slow to anger (toward parents in my studio, anyway) but when parents habitually don't do the listening I get miffed. As an advocate for the children, it is not fair to take Suzuki lessons and not do the listening. Children will not be able to keep the songs in review and use them as tools to grow. It will take so long to learn the songs that they will lose the joy of learning. They will not learn the language. They will be frustrated. It isn't fair. Listening is our number one priority. Period.

Having made that clear, I forgot to put on the listening for my kids today. Oops.

Tomorrow. . . listen. Listen to the current repertoire, listen to future repertoire, and listen to classical radio. If we do this, immerse our children in music, they WILL be bilingual after all, speaking music and English. And...if you listen to the little French children's song CD, you and your children might even become tri-lingual. At least you will be able to translate "Old McDonald Had a Farm. . . " I'm sticking with the language of music.