When it comes to raising kids today, parents are quickly bombarded with the overwhelming amount of technology available. With social media and other forms of media being readily available, it can be hard to keep your teen on the right track. By encouraging your child to listen to music instead of sitting on their phones, you could be helping them keep their minds active and healthy. Music can have such positive influences on teens, that a music therapy program is often successful during substance use treatment.
Importance of Music for Children
Daniel Levitin is an expert on how music affects the brain. His bestselling book This Is Your Brain On Music highlighted the many ways the brain reacts to music. With Fast Company, Levitin discusses his new book The Organized Mind, and how the brain is suffering as a result of technological interactions. For example, Levitin explains that the trending phenomena of allowing devices to teach children instead of parents and other people teaching children can have a harmful effect. “…We’ve learned recently that kids who don’t interact regularly with their parents but are instead put in front of educational or instructional television don’t learn the language properly.”
Other learning mechanisms are affected in the brain, which leads to higher cases of attention deficit and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. “…We’re also seeing that increasingly digital natives are reporting that they’ve got shorter attention spans than non-digital natives.” Problematically, that high-strung distraction of constant stimulation can cause a peculiar mental twist which sets children up for future problems. Children “…are accustomed to being constantly distracted and we know from neurochemical studies, people get addicted to that distraction.”
Children are losing touch with their innate ability to be mindfully aware of their own thought patterns. Being able to identify their needs and wants is a growing skill as they mature, but is often slighted by compulsive behaviors like drug and alcohol addiction. Consequently, adolescents can’t tell when they’re tired, when they’re bored, when they’re overwhelmed with emotion, or, as Levitin describes it when they’re experiencing information overload.
Music Leads to Mind-Wandering Mode
Music is one of the ways to get out of this hyper state and into what Levitin says is “the mind-wandering mode.” The mind needs to wander for periods of time without pressure or focus. Often, when the mind is chronically wandering, it is a sign the brain needs a break. As adults, we have another cup of coffee or continue to push ourselves, exhausting our brains. Kids, though immensely resilient, are not meant to endure that way. Too often, they are ridiculed for their distractions, inability to pay attention, and compulsive forms of coping. Levitin explains “Taking a break and getting yourself into this mind-wandering mode by giving into it for 15 minutes at a time every couple of hours or so, you effectively hit the reset button in the brain, restoring some neurochemicals that had been depleted through focused activity.”
Developing practical life skills for coping with moments of overload is something emphasized to adolescents who go to treatment for drug and alcohol addiction. Turning to music, whether playing music or listening to music, is one of the effective ways of helping the brain reset in a healthy manner. Music exploration doesn’t have to be an isolating experience. In addition, music can bring the family together by sharing personal favorites, exploring new music together, or playing instruments together.
Music Therapy Through Stonewater Adolescent Recovery Center
At Stonewater Adolescent Recovery Center, the family heals as a whole. Our residential treatment programs for adolescent addiction and alcoholism heal the mind, body, and spirit, giving young people a foundation for starting a new clean life. Experiential therapy programs we provide include the following:
- Art therapy program
- Pet therapy program
- Equine therapy program
- Yoga therapy program
- Fly fishing therapy program
For more information about music therapy, music for children, and how to help your loved one, contact Stonewater Adolescent Recovery Center at 662.373.2828.
