Scales to Scalpels by Lisa Wong

Author:Lisa Wong
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781453218334
Publisher: Pegasus Books

SHARPENING THE YOUNG BRAIN

As incredible as El Sistema is, there is no special magic in the way the Venezuelan kids respond to music. Music is innate in all children. As a pediatrician for twenty-five years, who deals with kids from birth up to age twenty-two, I can tell you that we’re all wired for music from our earliest days. I have many patients who will “pitch-match”—which means that if you sing to them, they will sing back to you on the exact same pitch. Every time I weigh a child on my scale, which looks like a little boat, I sing “Row Row Row Your Boat.” Most of them will vocalize in ways that match my pitch, even down to the age of eighteen months. A lot of babies like to be in the boat, and I think some of them would like to just sit in the scale forever and sing. When I give them their shots, I sing “Old MacDonald Had a Farm.” They tend not to cry—or cry a little less—if they are engaged in listening to the song. Their pain centers are lessened because they are singing with me, looking in my eyes and trusting me. On a good day, it seems that rarely ten percent of my patients cry when they’re getting shots, and I attribute that low number, not to my technique, but to our musical engagement through singing.

Sometimes I encounter children who have taught themselves to read by the age of three or four. Their parents come to me worried that the children might act out or become bored in kindergarten—and they probably will, to a certain extent. To those parents I say: time to start the piano. An instrument is a challenge that you can never fully conquer completely. There’s always one more piece ahead of you, or there’s always one more difficult thing that you can achieve. Or the piece that you have played for years can always be refined, retuned, or reinterpreted. That kind of challenge sharpens the brain.

One of my favorite patients was Ricky, who started the clarinet in his public elementary school. With encouragement, he thrived. Ricky came to my office at age eight for his annual appointment, clarinet in hand, and, to my delight, took it out and played “When the Saints Go Marching In!” He was a bright boy, perhaps not challenged enough in school, who found endless delight in working his way through pieces on his instrument. Doing that taught him lessons about patience, hard work, and self-discipline as valuable as any in the classroom. There was the added delight in the act of putting music out into the world, setting a room full of air vibrating with a bouncy march, and the reward of seeing the delight on the faces of his parents and doctor. Years later, as he graduated from my care, he brought me a CD of his band playing in New York’s Carnegie Hall.

Unfortunately, that inborn love of music sometimes gets

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