I was very lucky in that my mother was a coloratura soprano. She didn't have formal training but very very few people could sing as well as she could. I remember being 2 years old and my mother singing along around 1950 with the record player to Mario Lanza's "Be My Love" and tears would come to my eyes because the two of them singing was just so amazing to listen to. At the time we lived in Seattle, Washington which is overcast a lot and cold and I couldn't go outside much except in my snow suit to play in the snow then. So, any break in the monotony of life in 1950 was a good one. We didn't have a TV until I was 6 years old and by then living in Tujunga up against the mountains in the Los Angeles Area when my parents were put in charge of a church in Los Angeles.
My male cousin was 5 years older than I and already played the violin and piano. So, when I was 8 years old he already had a combo of a bass fiddle, a piano and a singer that played as sang together when he was 13 years old. Later he became first violin in the Glendale High School Orchestra and I heard them play at the high school several times. He was really good on the violin and also the piano and still plays today when he isn't too busy.
I started with piano lessons with my cousins piano teacher when I was 8 years old and by 12 years old I was pretty good and could play popular or classical music from sheet music very easily because I was a sight reader. I didn't really learn to play by ear until I taught myself the guitar and flute by about age 18 or 19.
I played the Concert Grand Steinway in Church from about age 12 to age 21 and by 15 I played the Baldwin Organ at church and learned to use all the stops and play on the pedals too (which is a foot keyboard).
Playing music gets a person in touch with their feelings which was really good for me because I always had a temper. My father came to me at age 12 when I had grown from 5 foot 2 to 5 foot 10 in one year and told me that I would have to always be the adult in the room and never let anyone get my goat or I might kill them because I was already too big and too strong for anyone to stop me from killing someone at that point in my life. Eventually in High school I was 6 foot 3 inches tall and by age 21 I was 6 feet 4 1/2 inches tall.
So, by age 12 I learned that when someone made me angry at school I would come home and play music on the piano and sing and let my anger go because I didn't want to spend the rest of my life in jail or be executed for killing some insane person at school. I had a good family and good parents and I didn't need to ruin my life by getting angry at all the insane people I met in school who likely wouldn't stay alive to see 20 even. This was before abortion when children whose parents didn't want them tortured them a lot so some people were really insane to deal with then. After abortion was legal this became much less of a problem in the U.S.
The point I'm trying to make here is that playing music in some ways saved my young life and so when I played piano and sang by myself or with my mother or played in church this developed empathy and kindness towards all life on earth. I had great parents and so I had no need to fight and kill other people like some people did then in the 1950s and 1960s. People were much more physically violent then with clubs and knives. It was before people started using guns because they didn't know how to fight.
Many more people got injured then and had to go to the hospital but many fewer died because they didn't shoot each other like now.
Then people had a chance to learn from their mistakes but now people just die and learn nothing.
Music can save your child's life by making them more understanding and kind towards all life on earth and less likely to go off and kill someone when they don't need to. Self defense is important to learn still but there is a really fine line between life and death always as a child grows up especially in public school like I did except for my last year in High school which was in a private school in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Learning to sing and or play an instrument like a piano can save your child's life both now and in the future.
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