Sing along

I love to sing in the car, in the kitchen and even sing along to music walking home (quietly!), but it’s a different thing singing in front of other people. I try to remember this when I encourage parents to join in singing with their baby. I’m also conscious that for many parents, it feels strange to sing with their baby when they’ve recently found out he or she is deaf. So why is it so important to sing with your deaf baby? 

  • Babies love to listen to people singing!

  • Singing naturally highlights the rhythm and tone of your voice. This is turn helps language. learning.

  • Even babies with a severe of profound hearing loss can benefit from singing as they can hear the intonation and rhythm.

  • Singing helps babies early social interaction.

  • Singing regularly can help deaf children to hear speech in noise.

  • We tend to sing the same few songs over and over, and this is really great for helping your baby to anticipate what come next in the song - ‘Round & round the garden’ is a good example of this.

  • Action rhymes and songs are so fun for babies, like ‘Wind the bobbin up’ ‘Row row the boat’ ‘Wheels on the bus’ 

  • You can collect a bag of toys that go with different songs - that way your baby can choose a song before they can tell you which one they want. 

  • Leave gaps when you sing to encourage your baby to take a vocal turn.

  • Once your baby is familiar with a few songs, you can try starting to sing first before you add the actions - that way when your baby starts to rock when you sing ‘Row row the boat’ you will see that they know the song!

  • Making up your own songs about everyday routines is a great way to build understanding - my brother in law used to sing ‘Up the stiddly stairs, up the stiddly stairs, stiddly stairs, wiggly wears, up the stiddly stairs’ with his boys when they were little. 

There are some great resources to help you to sing with your little one and give you some new songs to sing:

Karen Gazeley