t is really not just about music or art - it's about enhancing your child's intellectual capabilities. Music, language, and art do make the difference!

Significant and very credible research has confirmed the positive effects on academic, mental functioning and social skills that result from a music education.

Beyond it being a wonderful skill for any child, new research shows how learning music can help your child in so many more ways:

• Improves reasoning capacity and problem solving skills
• Improves mathematics and language performance
• Enhances memory and cognitive capacities
• Helps develop greater social and team skills
• Develops speech, reading and listening skills
• Fosters healthy self esteem
• Improves coordination
• Increases mental concentration
• It gives your child a competitive edge

Here is what the Australian Music Association reports on the importance of music in the overall development of a child:

"For many years, we have believed that children should learn music 'for music's sake', because music was an excellent accomplishment and part of a well rounded, balanced education. And so it is.

But these days children are expected to learn so many more skills and parents have begun to ask which subjects their child could ignore or drop. The answer is: not music!

As every parent knows, their child is a mixture of nature and nurture. A newborn baby already has all his or her brain cells and as the child develops he or she naturally builds pathways between these cells or neurons. These pathways (referred to as neural pathways) are there for life.

Learning music from an early age enables those neural pathways to grow in ways that can help your child maximise the potential they were born with. Research shows that playing music can make significant differences to children's abilities related to learning, memory and social interactions.

Music is still an excellent accomplishment, but it can also make the difference for a child." (See http://www.mca.org.au/mpfl/research1.htm)

Recent research has proven that musical potential is best developed at the younger ages, when readiness for learning music is at its peak. Though, it is true that any time is a good time to take up music. The fact, however, remains: the earlier the better.

Music is a skill that improves with age. Whether children continue their music later on in high school, church choir, community orchestra or just as a relaxing way to relieve day-to-day stress, an early music education now is a healthy investment in your child's future.