How to help your child develop taste for arts

When a baby is born parents are usually sure that it´s the most beautiful and clever child ever. They watch every move and delight in every sound the child makes. Later, parents encourage children to learn different skills like walking, speaking, riding bicycle. And there are parents who try to help their kids learn to love the arts. Is that possible? Sure it is, if you start early enough. Best time is definitely during pregnancy. Nobody can promise you that your child will become a professional artist, for that you need both special talent and a bit of luck, but every child can become an art fan.
Some tips for pregnancy:
At this stage, the choice of arts you can promote to your child is limited to music and dance. If you are a music fan, then this is the perfect time for you. Research shows that children often prefer music they were exposed to during their prenatal stage of life. But even if you prefer visual arts it´s a good idea to play your baby some quality music. The reason is, that you can develop a good taste in your baby and once the baby is born it will be able to recognize beauty in any form.
First 3 to 4 years are crucial:
I´ve met many parents who tried to make their children like reading or playing musical instrument but they started at the age of six or seven or even later and were dissapointed because their child simply had no interest in that activity. If you want to get your child to any activity, you should take advantage of natural learning process that is, in certain point - usually around the age of three, based on imitation - children love to do what they see their parents are doing. So, the most effective thing to do is to do the activity yourself and let the child watch you and later do it together with you.
Our experience:
With our daughter we spent a lot of time drawing, reading books and she could watch her father play the guitar and record his own songs. At he age of two her talent for drawing was obvious and she would sit by me and we were both reading - she was a small copy of me - holding book in the same way as I did, legs crossed, turning pages and reading in whisper from pictures, making up her own stories. At the age of four she recorded her own CD - just a demo, but we were amazed to watch her listening to the music my husband had recorded beforhand and then making up her own lyrics and tunes. Today she´s ten, she plays piano, takes singing lessons, paints incredible pictures and writes her own stories, not to speak about the amount of books she reads (only yesterday she read 120 pages of Narnia). Maybe you think that it is easy to claim it works when the child is gifted after her father, but we have a three-year-old boy in foster care. He´s been with us since he was 13 months old and now he enjoyes singing and every time Lucy plays the piano he runs to her and tries to play with her. He also enjoyes listening to fairy-tales we read for him and he takes book himself and tries to re-read the stories from pictures. And our seven-month-old baby boy is already obsessed with piano and I have to sing him all day long although I have no musical talent whatsoever.
So, be positive, your child doesn´t have to be one of those computer addicted kids with aversion to reading. All you have to do is share your hobbies with you baby from as early age as possible.

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