How Music Helps Children with Autism

You’ve heard that music can have wonderful benefits for children, but more studies are showing amazing connections between music and children with autism. Although children on the autism spectrum often have a hard time communicating with others, there is evidence that suggests they process and understand music just as well, if not better, than their peers without autism. There are so many ways music helps children with autism.

Communication

Depending on where a child falls on the autism spectrum, verbal communication can be one of the biggest struggles they face. Music has been shown to improve children with autism’s vocalization, verbalization, and vocabulary, with singing even helping them learn to express their emotions better.

Behavior

Studies have shown that music connects to the auditory and motor parts of the brain, helping children with autism understand and obey verbal commands and directions. Music has also been shown to decrease negative behaviors like aggression and tantrums in all children.

Social Skills

Research has shown that music helps children with autism engage more with their peers in a social setting. One study showed that the music encouraged children on the autism spectrum to interact more appropriately with other children and helped them understand concepts like sharing and taking turns.

Emotions

Children with autism are more likely to experience anxiety and frustration than children without autism are. Upon being introduced to music, children on the autism spectrum experienced less of these emotions, likely due to the calming, repetitive rhythms of classical music.

Cognition

In schools for special needs children, teachers often use music as a way to improve cognitive development, since music’s rhythmic patterns help children with autism learn and organize auditory information. This then helps them improve their memories and capacity for learning daily schedules, as well as their attention span, in some cases.

Being involved in music helps children with and without autism grow as individuals in numerous ways, so start your child’s musical journey today at Grace Music School. We offer music lessons on Long Island for children of all ages and experience levels. For more information or to schedule a lesson, call us at 631-239-6169 (Fort Salonga) or 631-470-9705 (Melville).