Stepping into the world of drumming is like finally deciding you’re starting to regularly visit the gym. It’s a revolutionary change in your life. But why do you actually learn how to play the drum? Is it because you want to discover your passion for music? Probably, it’s because you came from a family of drummers or musicians.
However, some parents wish to enroll their children in schools that teach them how to play this instrument. They believe music can help their kids learn better in school and be at the top of their class. How real is this connection? Let’s explore this piece, which will discuss the science behind the impact of drumming on a child’s education.
What Science Says About Playing the Drum and a Child’s Learning
To perform better in school isn’t the top reason why kids will learn how to play the drum. For one thing or another, they venture into this musical habit because they are looking for a hobby during a summer vacation, they want to relieve their stress, or their friends are doing it. Peer pressure, basically.
Whether your child picks up drumming at home or joins a program to learn drums in New York City, the relationship between rhythm and improved school performance is more powerful than you might imagine.
According to this study published in the National Institutes of Health, rock drumming enhances the motor and psychosocial skills of children with emotional and behavioral difficulties. When kids can cope better with the people around them, they can learn better.
“Music has been integrated into the care offered to children and adolescents who have a range of mental, emotional, behavioral, and physical needs,” says the study. “… Music is intuitively appealing given the social interactions such encounters create through singing and musical instruments.”
In other words, playing the drum boosts a child’s learning by enhancing focus, memory, coordination, and emotional regulation. All these activities support their brain development, social skills, and creative expression, as seen in the study presented above. Let’s take a closer look.
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How Playing the Drums Helps in Your Child’s Learning
1. It Improves Focus and Attention
In drumming, there’s movement. It requires sustained concentration and rhythm recognition—two key ingredients for academic performance. Children must listen, process, and respond to timing, patterns, and coordination, often all at once. Hence enhancing their focus and attention.
2. It Boosts Brain Development and Cognitive Skills
The brain can groove with a drum’s rhythmic sounds. When a child drums, both the hemispheres of their brain are engaged, not only the right hemisphere for creativity and emotion, but also the left hemisphere for logic and sequencing. With both sides of the brain working, a child’s cognitive skills are developed.
3. It Enhances Emotional Regulation and Self-Expression
In the study above, drumming does magic in enhancing kids who have difficulties with managing emotions. Drumming offers an emotional outlet that allows kids to release energy, reduce stress, and regulate their feelings safely and productively.
4. It Encourages Discipline and Goal-Setting
Playing the drum isn’t as simple as tapping the drumsticks over the instrument. Like playing any other musical instrument, like the guitar or violin, it requires patience, practice, and determination. You cannot learn how to jive with your band with your drum overnight. Instead, success is earned through effort and repetition. This training in discipline is also valuable in the academic world.
5. It Builds Social Skills and Confidence
Nothing compares to when kids feel more confident about themselves because they can harness their talent into power. When kids succeed in performing as part of a school ban, at a summer camp, or as simply as in the neighborhood, they make more friends and they feel more valued in society, rather than isolating themselves with their smartphones.
Playing the Drum and Learning Go Hand in Hand
A study from Stockholm’s Karolinska Institutet showed that drummers who had better rhythm scored higher on an intelligence test. True enough.
Drumming is more than just an art form and more than an outlet for your feelings. It works effectively when students need something inspiring and worthwhile to do that will push them to break boundaries, such as when in school. So, the next time your child feels intimidated of the nearby quiz, have them play the drum and see how much of their confidence can be boosted.
