The power of musical learning : A pilot study of whether private music lessons can decrease parental stress and disruptive behavior in children

Childhood disruptive behavior is a major societal issue and has been linked with more serious disorders, such as Conduct Disorder and Oppositional Defiant Disorder. Research has documented an association between parental stress and child disruptive behavior, while those who are poor or homeless having additional stressors to contend with due to the uncertainty of whether they will be able to meet basic needs on a consistent basis. Music instruction has been shown to promote self-discipline and increase various cognitive functions. The primary aim of this study was to evaluate whether private music instruction can lead to decreases in childhood disruptive behavior as well as, by extension, parental stress; an exploratory interest was whether there is a correlation between whether a parent practices with their child and decreases in both disruptive behaviors in children and parental stress. Participating families received 12 weeks of private violin instruction and collected data was analyzed using statistical and visual analysis. Results of the Conners-3 showed a decrease in disruptive behavior on a weekto-week basis, while preand post-evaluations of the Behavior Assessment System for Children, 2nd edition (BASC-2) saw no decrease. Results showed no decrease in parental stress. One limitation of the study was the inconsistency of lessons, which could not be held, as intended, every week. Future directions should focus on just child disruptive behavior changes, stressing an expanded demographic with more students and multiple teachers. anxiety or if parental practices caused the CDB, or, alternatively if a stressful home environment contributed to an increase in CDB. Parents play a pivotal role in how their children adapt to adversity. Within families, the ability of the children to adapt to various life experiences depends significantly on their parental influence [8]. Whether children with mental health needs are able to take advantage of mental health services also depends heavily on their parental influence and mindset. Perception towards mental health treatment can present obstacles to children receiving the services that they need. According to Smith et al. [9], there are a number of reasons why parents of children with mental health needs remove their children from services: These include a distrust in pharmacotherapy, lack of psychoeducation, lack of faith in the competency of their clinician, and a false belief that the child is fully healthy after roughly three sessions. Given such barriers to care, it would be advantageous for research to explore novel intervention approaches that could exhibit efficacy for leading to improvements in the core problems and associated sequelae of CDB. Compounding the problematic nature of CDB and access to services are the issues that accompany being a low-income or The Power Of Musical Learning: A Pilot Study Of Whether Private Musical Lessons Can Decrease Parental Stress And Disruptive Behavior In Children Childhood disruptive behavior (hereafter referred to by the acronym, CDB) is that which is troublesome, interruptive, and/or disturbing in a familial, academic, or social context. According to Bierman et al. [1] CDB in schools predicted academic difficulties such as low grades and failure to graduate. Byrd et al. [2] demonstrated that prolonged disruptive behavior can lead to delinquent behavior in adulthood. There are currently millions of children diagnosed with Attention Deficit/ Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), Oppositional Defiant Disorder (ODD), and Conduct Disorder (CD) [3,4]. Each of the disorders shares common symptoms with disruptive behavior. CDB is associated with increased parental stress [5]. According to Barry et al. [6], mothers dealing with depression and anxiety tended to also report having boys displaying CDB. Further, longitudinal studies have demonstrated the relationship between parental influences and CDB [7]. It should be noted that Barry et al. [6], call into question the directionality of this relationship; that is, whether the CDB in the child caused the parental depression/ Fadlullah Ba’th, Mychailyszyn M 643 homeless family, which continues to be a major challenge for society in the United States of America. According to Trentacosta et al. [10] children in low-income families were found to be more at risk to develop a disruptive behavior disorder due to the additional pressures that low-income families face in regards to meeting ongoing housing concerns, food, and other basic needs. While the overall percentage of homelessness in the USA is declining, there were still 20 states that saw an increase in the homeless population from 2012 to 2013; of those, Mississippi had the lowest rate at 8 per 100,000 people, while the District of Columbia had the highest number of homeless individuals per 10,000 peoples with 106 [11]. Of particular concern is that, in spite of the overall decline in homelessness, the number of homeless youth, and families continues to rise [12]. These lowSES and homeless families are more affected by the effects of imprisonment than other populations. Individuals who have been identified as poor or homeless at some point in their lives are also overrepresented in the correctional facilities system, as the majority of currently incarcerated inmates are minorities from low-income backgrounds [13]. To add to this, Massoglia et al. [13] reported that former-inmate minorities generally return to the same low-SES neighborhoods following release as prior to their imprisonment. While this may not relate to the children directly, such youth are growing up in communities that are heavily represented by individuals who have been incarcerated. This could lead to the assumption that low-income families are at an even greater disadvantage in terms of possible perceived inevitability of imprisonment due to environmental risks. With the United States underperforming overall in regards to delivering mental health services [14], children in need of mental health services are falling through the gaps, especially children in low-income families. Whether this is due to parental barriers to treatment, or to children not being identified, more education-based interventions could provide a way to help fill in the gaps in the mental health system. With the current state of education budgets in the USA, however, there are many systems that have forced schools to make decisions about which programs are more valuable than others. Oftentimes, the arts are not seen as a necessity, and these programs become eliminated from school curricula [15]. Certain methods of music instruction, particularly the Suzuki Method, focus on positive reinforcement and self-discipline, also stressing parental involvement and character development (Niles, 2012). In music instruction with young children, parental involvement is vital to the child’s growth due to the expectation that the parent will serve as the teacher at home [16]. Thus, it is assumed that how a parent views his or her relationship with the child can affect the learning environment, particularly the home-based musical learning environment of the child, and thus may influence the ultimate the nature of benefit experienced. There are many cognitive and psychological benefits associated with music. Just listening to music has been shown to decrease anxiety in a multitude of situations, including for patients that are about to undergo surgery [17]. Music may have the capacity to decrease CDB [18]. For instance, music has been shown to decrease instances of bullying behavior and associated thoughts on the playground, as Ziv et al. [18] found that playing calming background music – defined by sparse melodies on top of a musical drone – during recess decreased bullying behavior and arousal overall for the children at recess, leading to a higher level of enjoyment during recess. This led to their conclusion that music can “have a calming effect, reduce anxiety, improve mood, and influence arousal levels” [18] In terms of neurocognitive benefits, music training has recently been shown to improve language skills by activating centers of the brain that process rhythm, timbre, and pitch, which can in turn lead to improvements in school performance due to strengthening neural processes, especially for children with learning disorders [19]. Additionally, direct music therapy has been shown to lead to improvements in communication, self-esteem, and levels of depression [20]. Even where some schools attempt to keep general music education in public schools, few offer private music education, which is described as one-on-one musical instruction. Due to the limited number of schools offering this service, it is generally seen as a service that is reserved for families who can find private instruction for their children on their own which, due to the associated financial cost of paying for lessons out in the community, tends to be reserved for middle-SES families and above. A recent study has found that private music lessons improve “language abilities including verbal memory, literacy, verbal intelligence, and speech processing” [21]. This means that there is an entire subsection of the population that has a very limited opportunity to reap the many benefits that are associated with private music instruction. The present study therefore aims to investigate whether private music instruction is an efficacious intervention for reducing disruptive behavior in economically disadvantaged youth. This research stems from the hope that music lessons might reflect an alternative vehicle – as compared to a traditional therapy session – for acclimating a child to a structured environment and teaching discipline to children. It is also believed that parental involvement is vital to this process. According to Bugeja [22] both the relationship between the parent and teacher, along with the parent’s involvement in their child’s lessons, ha