#Magic radia plus

'The fact that you're singing a lullaby when the baby's upset, you're not doing some other thing like that – the baby can tell that you're doing only that,' he says. He thinks the behaviors and actions involved when a parent sings to their child also may play a role. If a stranger came and started singing to your kid, it probably wouldn't have the same effect. He points out that doesn't explain everything, though. So there's something in the kind of DNA of lullaby that helps to calm infants.' The babies found all the songs pretty relaxing, he says, 'but when they're listening to these lullabies, even though they're totally unfamiliar and not in a language the baby understands, they relax more. His team did a study playing songs for infants in an unfamiliar language – some of the songs were lullabies, and some weren't. Still, there is just something about lullabies, says Sam Mehr, who studies the psychology of music at the University of Auckland. If you really don't want to sing, a backrub can have similar effects, she says. You can sing with any level of enthusiasm or skill, as long as it's slow tempo. But Fields says that is not a requirement for this to work. 'They slept better, but they also showed a lot of the effects of decreased heart rate and respiration, better feeding, which probably explains why they had fewer days in the neonatal intensive care unit and their mothers' anxiety was reduced.' 'What they found was that the mothers' lullabies were more soothing to the infants,' she says.

#Magic radia plus

Many of the studies on music and sleep are done with preterm infants in the NICU – including one which compared infants who heard Mozart to infants who heard their mother's lullabies plus a control group that didn't hear any music. With the preschoolers it was a 19% faster sleep onset, so of course the teachers loved that,' she says. 'With the toddlers there was a 35% faster sleep onset. The teachers played classical music at the beginning of naptime. She did a study of toddlers and preschoolers taking naps at the university nursery schools. 'If you think of a child's thoughts as racing and the mother or whoever comes in and sings slowly, rhythmically, it's going to slow their thoughts and then basically they're going to lull themselves into sleep,' says Tiffany Field, a researcher on the faculty of pediatrics at the University of Miami School of Medicine. It's the power of lullabies, especially when sung by parents and caregivers. Or I'm casting a spell: 'You will fall asleeeeepppp. Honestly, when it works like this, it makes me feel like I have a superpower. This is a favorite lullaby, we learned from taking Music Together classes for years when she was younger.īy the time I reach the end – 90 seconds later – she is snoring softly, and I slide out from under the covers and down the bunk bed ladder to enjoy my tea. 'Yes, Sleep, Sleep, Sleepyhead,' she requests. 'Do you want a song?' I ask Noa as she yawns. I have two things to back me up here: heaps of anecdotal stories and actual scientific evidence.įirst, an anecdote, in the form of a secret phone recording made in late April at around 9 p.m., as I climbed into the top bunk where my 8-year-old daughter sleeps.

It's possible you're thinking: Of course an NPR reporter's secret weapon is Twinkle Twinkle. In moments like this, I have a secret weapon: lullabies. She tosses and turns, not quite ready to settle down. She's a little wound up from the school day. Standing (or rather lying) between me and sips of tea is my nearly 8-year-old. My spouse has brewed tea and is queuing up something for the grown-ups to watch.

We've cleaned up the dishes and our youngest daughter is already asleep.

With great attention to detail, she has drawn the unicorns on her comforter. This is a sleeping self-portrait by Sasha, age 4. The reporter's kids, Sasha and Noa, both love falling asleep to lullabies.