The music, poetry and stories you play for and read to your children can have a tremendous impact on their growth and development. While there is certainly no shortage of options in the kids music genre, choosing the right audio for children is something to which parents should lend a considerable amount of time. And more importantly, buying CDs for kids should not be just another way to keep them quiet on long car rides.



Countless studies have shown that the benefits of auditory stimulation in young children, such as storytelling and children's audio books, can have a lasting beneficial impact, helping kids in everything from schoolwork to play time. Music helps children develop the creative portions of their mind, improving spatial learning and helping them learn languages faster. More over, children who listen to music can better understand the split-second changes in word syllables and inflection and have the additional benefit of learning to read sooner and with a broader understanding of word usage. Furthermore, integrating audio-based literature and poetry with preschool programs can substantially enhance the social development of a child.

With so much benefit inherent to kids music and literature, parents should not push play on just any audio book. It is very simple for today's publishing industry to simply translate children's literature to CD, offering another vehicle by which to promote a product. So parents should choose their child's audio book or CD carefully. The best audio books and CDs for kids are those that are specifically produced to enhance growth, make it enjoyable and provide learning opportunities.

Parents should buy CDs and audio books for kids relative to age, paying special attention to the child's stage of mental development, as some kids learn faster than others.

From ages one to three, children become very curious and start to imitate the sounds of the adults and world around them. Parents choosing audio books and CDs for children of these ages might want to consider short stories and poems that include a lot of simple sounds and tunes, like noises from animals, car horns and simple instruments.

At age four, most children are beginning to understand the enjoyment in rhymes and alliteration. Thus, perhaps a CD or audio publication that highlights poems with rhyme or that play on alliterative word sounds would be the best option. At six, children are beginning to understand the concept of syllables and how they form words. For example, they can be asked to remove "car" from "carpet" to say "pet." They also better appreciate silly humor and riddles, so audio books and CDs for kids of this age would most benefit the child if they had longer, more advanced stanzas and wordplay, longer poems and songs with multiple instruments.

As a child grows physically and is more coordinated and physically capable, choose CDs and audio books that will promote movement and dancing. An infant for example, would not be able to reap the benefits of a faster-paced song because of the child's inability to respond to the songs commands or implied movements. However, every childhood development expert would recommend parents to encourage physical activity of all kinds for infants and to aid in their physical reaction to musical storytelling or CDs.

Audio books for children are a great alternative to the traditional bedtime story. While nothing can replace the memories of watching your son or daughter fall asleep to their favorite story, mixing in regular audio books, kids songs on CD and stories in MP3 format can help them absorb the sounds and auditory benefits independent from your speech patterns or tonalities and greatly enhance their development into a healthy, happy and intelligent child.