“Jesus said, ‘Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.’” – Matthew 19:14

Today I was reminded of this verse, and of how lovely children really are.

(If you think this post is about me thinking about having children and stuff like that…sorry you’re on the wrong track!)

…

This month I have been playing the piano for Children’s Worship.

And about ten to fifteen minutes before the Children’s Worship starts, I will make my way into the worship room. I will see a few children already there, going about their own little things. I will go up to them and mingle with them, just to get to know them better.

I observe a little boy drawing his doodle of a urinating mutant plant, and I will strike up a conversation with him and ask what he’s drawing. (The answer is “a urinating mutant plant”.) And then a little girl next to me will hand me her water bottle and ask me to help her turn open the lid cos it’s too tight. Which I do. Then I strike up another conversation with another little girl, but she is slightly more reserved.

Then after all this, I proceed to the piano and start practising the songs for worship. And by this time more and more kids will have entered the room.

If there’s one thing that fascinates kids, it’s a person playing the piano in the same room when worship has not yet started.

So I will get lots of kids coming up to my side as I go through the songs, with that look of fascination and wonderment on their faces. It seems like almost every kid in the room will make the mandatory trip up to my side to see what I’m doing. And then I will just turn to them and start asking them things like “Do you play the piano too?”. Some nod their heads. Others shake their head. One tells me she learns the piano but doesn’t play it. (Go figure.)

They like it when you talk to them. Sometimes they just stand near to you, but you can sense that they would like to be noticed. They would like some kind of conversation.

One great way to start a conversation is to ask about their exams, since it’s the exam period now. For those who haven’t started, I talk to them about their anxieties (if any). For those who’ve finished their exams, I ask them how they fared.

For the kids whom I’m more familiar with, the conversation gets more interesting. One kid tells me he wants to learn the drums and play in a band. I learn from another that she is taking her music theory exam soon.

Kids are really wonderful, don’t you think?

…

One thing I’ve learnt when playing the piano for the children – they’re incredibly intelligent.

We tend to sometimes “talk down” to kids or teach them with the mindset that they’re young and that their level of absorption is low. Nothing is further from the truth.

I always believe that children are highly intelligent…much more than we give them credit for.

When it comes to music, they pick up really fast. They can grasp the melody of a song very quickly, if we teach them like we would proper adults. And I’m not just talking about simple, sing-along kiddie songs here. I’m talking about more advanced songs as well.

Not only that. From playing the piano for them, I’ve come to realise that they’ve got this very good “feel” for the music. For instance, they are surprisingly good at catching the key of a song, and they have this innate sense of when to come in whenever I play an intro, even though they might be hearing it for the first time. (Trust me, a lot of adults can’t even do this.)

It’s amazing. They’re all very musically-inclined, and I like the idea of them being exposed to good Christian music from a young age, to further develop their musical reception. I like the idea of teaching them good Christian music from a young age, so that they will develop this natural “feel” for music, e.g. tonality, rhythm, harmony, structure, etc.

I also love it when I hear the children hit the high notes, like say, a high E. It’s such a fantastic moment which is rather hard to describe. It’s like, their voices are still young and tender, so they can’t really hit the note forcefully. But rather, they try their best to go up to that note and you can sense the tenderness and vulnerability in their voices when they all go up in unison like that. It’s really a special moment.

So the bottomline is: Don’t underestimate these children’s abilities when it comes to music. They can be really, really good.