What kind of music should parents listen to in order to build relationships with a teenager
'26.10.2018'
Source: The Daily Mail
To strengthen the relationship with a teenage child, American psychologists advise parents to listen to Drake, Cardi B, and Ariana Grande with their children.
The fight over what kind of music will play on the radio in the car is a classic history of the American family, writes The Daily Mail. But if parents and children can enjoy the same melodies, then perhaps something in their relationship will change for the better, suggests a new study by scientists from the University of Arizona.
The authors of the study recommend parents to try to listen with the children (of course, not in a row) TOP-40 of the most popular songs of the charts of today.
In addition, experts advise introducing teens to the work of older masters who influenced modern pop music, such as David Bowie. All this will help to "sync" with your children, and not only in musical preferences.
It is quite possible that you turned on classical music and let the child “listen” to it even before his birth - and this has long been encouraged by experts. Many moms and dads use musical compositions to calm newborns and growing babies, and also sing lullabies to them to help the baby fall asleep. Music lessons for the little ones are also popular, including with their parents.
But as soon as children reach adolescence, music from the unifying part of family life can cause difficulties in relationships.
When children are young, they enjoy singing songs with their parents or singing along with songs in the car, but as soon as children take their first steps into adolescence, they put on their headphones and listen to their music, ”says one of the study authors, Dr. Jake Harwood.
“Music makes people sync. If you are listening to music with a friend, you may even start to move in sync with them, and this is due to the fact that you may like him better, ”explains Harwood.
Likewise, “if we keep up with the person, it increases our sense of union with him, of one belonging,” he adds.
This aroused the curiosity of one of his students, Sandy Wallace, who was the first author of a new study of family relationships and music.
“She suggested that parents and children who listen to music together might experience a similar phenomenon and feel more in sync and alignment with each other,” explains Harwood.
It is quite possible that the fact that parents and children seem to collide “in the middle” of this phenomenon with their musical tastes also works and can enrich each other's inner world, find common points of contact.
But you can't force someone to listen to TOP 40 or say “you should only listen to the classics, this is the only decent music,” says Harwood. In his opinion, this will not give a positive result. Everything must be done gently, gradually and correctly.
In addition to studying this synchronization effect, scientists found that sharing the emotions expressed in a song together helped create a sense of empathy between parent and child.
