Through music, we teach children how to recognize and process certain spiritual experiences and messages coming to them. Music opens a child’s spirit like nothing else does. They can sing out their joyful feelings. They can use an instrument to celebrate life or to play out their sorrow in a minor key. Budding musicians make music with all their soul. And some kids use music as a way to express their feelings toward God.

How does music influence your child’s spiritual and emotional well-being?

Notice in the following example how music met this child’s deep need:

My first music performance was at the orphanage with an audience of other children at House-Grandmother’s. They encouraged my love for singing and performance when no one else did.

Music kept up the spirit of this woman I interviewed about her childhood spirituality. Through years of foster care and orphanage life, music “supported me as a child. I also came to my first awareness of God as someone who loved me unconditionally.”

Do you notice how emotion and spirit connected in her inner life? The same may be true of your child in certain situations.

Music can help a child calm herself.

After children have an angry outburst or an upset, they have their own ways of expressing their wish for peace and calm to return. Can you think of times when music played a part in reducing your child’s stress?

Music helps children rise above their circumstances.

Newspaper reporter Steve Lopez was at the County Jail with members of the Los Angeles Philharmonic. He spoke to an inmate who links her spiritual well-being and music:

Music digs deep into my soul. Melody calls me, it’s soothing, and it lets me know I’m safe emotionally and spiritually, and I can go where I want to go.

Through music we help our children recognize and process spiritual experiences and messages coming to them.

Tweetable: Through music, children and teens absorb perspectives about the nature of life, humanity, redemption and love. Click to Tweet