Thank you for your interest in optimizing the development of your child!  One our main goals at Growing Sound is to educate parents on the importance of social-emotional development and arm them with tools to help instill these skills into their children.  Each of our CDs is written to address specific, critical protective factors that all children need to succeed.  Below is an overview of each of our cds and the characteristics they help build:

• I Can Do It, Songs of Confidence
  The child that has confidence is more likely to exhibit initiative, thinking and acting independently to meet their own needs.  Confidence allows children to engage in the important acts of asking questions, making and carrying out plans, problem solving, using creativity, and meeting new people and tasks with optimism.  The themes of these songs are based on key concepts and findings from resilience theory and research, Positive Psychology, and research on executive brain functions.
• I Can Settle Down, Songs of Self-Control
  Self-control is the ability to experience a range of feelings and express them using the words and actions that society considers appropriate.  The skills associated with self-control allow children to get along with peers and adults and participate in an array of classroom routines, activities and experiences.  These songs encourage children to see rules as positive tools for self management. 
• I Can Count on  You, Songs of Belonging
  Songs of belonging promote and celebrate the skills involved in relating to parents, teachers and friends; and the experiences of belonging to a family, a community and the world!  Attachment is a mutual strong and long-lasting relationship between a child and significant adult such as parents, family members and teachers.  Secure attachment in the early years predicts well-being in adolescence and adulthood.
• Beautiful Baby, Wonderful Child, Song for Infants and Toddlers
  These songs celebrate the powerful connection between mother/caregiver and infant and the importance of this connection as a secure base from which the toddler begins to explore her world.  There are several developmental themes which underlie these songs.  First is the intensity of the attachment through “mutual gaze” that begins to establish an emotional connection between mother and infant.  Research is just beginning to capture the importance of these encounters to the developing brain. Another theme is the importance of the caregiver’s attunement to the emerging initiative behaviors of her infant/toddler.  The courage to explore and the assurance of secure attachment are the competing motives experienced by infants/toddlers.  A final underlying theme of the songs is self-regulation.  The ability of the infant to begin to control the intensity and duration of their own emotional states through their emotional communication with their caregiver is a major early milestone of self-regulation.  These themes of attachment, initiative, and self-regulation are critical to the optimal development of the child.
• My Box of Dreams, Songs for Bedtime
  Developing effective sleep patterns is an important goal in early childhood.  Many parents of toddlers and preschoolers recount nightly bedtime battles.  They dread the process and anticipate a struggle every night.  If parents approach bedtime with anxiety and trepidation, these negative feeling become contagious and the child’s level of arousal increases.  It is important to establish a bedtime routine that is consistent and that progressively calms the child’s demeanor.   A bath followed by reading a book in the lap of a parent is a good prescription for easy sleep transition. Transitional events like bedtime are inherently stressful for young children.  They are in the dark and feel alone.  The songs in Box of Dreams are designed to create a soothing atmosphere that helps the child make this transition to sleep calmly.  Our wish is also that the songs become cues for parents to frequently send their child the key messages of love and hope.

We are working on some additional tools and supplemental activities for parents that we hope to release in 2011.  Please check back or sign up for email newsletter for updates on our products.

“I just want to let you know how much my children love Mr. David's music.  We never take it out of our cd player in the car.  We listen to it every day, on the way to school and back.  My 2-year old demands it! Even after I drop my children off, I find myself still listening to and singing along with the cd! The positive messages in the songs are wonderful for children and adults alike.  Thank you for offering such a wonderful product!
-Courtney Boehm, parent of child attending Imagine Tomorrow preschool

“It has been wonderful to see my 3 year old react to the Growing Sound CDs.  Maxwell tells me to he wants to hear “my music” when we get in the car.  It shows me just how much it pays attention to the words of the songs and relates to them.  I had no idea he was going to enjoy them so much and I had no idea how much I was going to enjoy watching him.  Thanks so much!”
-Erika J. McMullen, Executive Director, Cincinnati MD Resource Center