For Laura Scudder’s daughter Hayden, age 9, the guitar has always been her go-to instrument.

“She had several toy guitars when she was little, so she was showing interest way back when,” Scudder said. “Through the years she’s also been into Hannah Montana and Selena Gomez and all the Disney music, and guitar lessons is the one thing she’s ever really asked me to do because she loves to sing and she’s not shy.”

Natalie Mullis, a board-certified music therapist with Key Changes Music Therapy, said music education goes far beyond the obvious skills of teaching children to play instruments. Music education can help children perform better in the classroom as well, she said.

“Musical training has been linked to improved attention span, greater listening skills, improved language performance, and mathematics,” she said. “However, the key to this is actually playing music, not just listening.”

Lisa Rayner, who teaches music at Pontiac Elementary, agreed.

“We stack a lot of things into learning music,” she said. “They have to think about posture, breathing, duration, and reading music. Cognitively exercising all areas of the brain helps them.”

Reading music came in handy for one fifth-grade math class, Rayner said.

“In music, you have the division of beats, which is essentially working on fractions,” she said. “One of the fifth-grade teachers came to me and said she had been having a difficult time teaching fractions to her students, but when she began mentioned music and dividing beats, her students said, ‘Oh yeah, we did that in music class.’ And it all clicked.”

According to Mullis, music training also helps with concentration.

“The cognitive benefits of music lessons are for all instruments, including voice,” she said. “Music training is like training the brain to process and pay attention to more than we normally do on a non-music day. It’s like exercise for the brain.”

Leslie Jones, who enrolled her daughter Elizabeth, 7, in piano after inheriting her grandmother’s piano, has noticed an improvement in Elizabeth’s ability to concentrate.

“She has to practice four times a week for 30 minutes each time, and I’ve really noticed an improvement in her becoming more disciplined about other things like her school work,” Jones said. “It seems like she can focus on her schoolwork for longer periods of time.”

As a home-schooling parent, Melissa Bird is a believer that music education offers many benefits for her children. That’s why she includes music lessons into her daughters’ school-day schedules.

“Since the beginning, we’ve made music education a priority each year,” she said. “I started with piano for everybody. I just think it’s a must. It teaches discipline. I believe it helps with hand-eye coordination and math skills and just getting the brain thinking.”

Of Bird’s four daughters, three are still taking private music lessons. Anna-Bradley, 11, and Karis, 16, still take piano lessons, but Lizzie, 14, takes piano, voice and recently added guitar lessons to her music studies.

“Lizzie started showing an interest in the guitar, and my parents bought her lessons for her birthday this past summer,” Bird said. “She’s been going since August, and she’s just really took off with it.”

With Anna-Bradley, Bird has noticed her concentration on the piano is really paying off.

“She’s been taking for three years, but she is really about to catch up to Lizzie because she gives it that 30 minutes of concentrated effort a day,” Bird said. “She’s very organized, disciplined and faithful about it.”

While Bird has found that lessons have helped Anna-Bradley become more disciplined, she admitted she has a harder time with music training translating into academic perks with Lizzie.

“Music is Lizzie’s love,” Bird said. “In fact, it trumps schoolwork. I’ll find her practicing and have to make her stop and do her schoolwork. I can’t really say music has improved her studies because she gets lost in it.”

Social interaction is another benefit of music education, according to Rayner.

“It gives kids a way to work with others by creating music as a group,” she said. “That’s helping their relationships with their peers.”

Scudder can see the social benefits from Hayden’s guitar lessons.

“I think she does enjoy talking to other students about what she does because they do have a school band with the flags and that kind of stuff, so I think she shares that with a lot of students,” Scudder said. “I’m glad she has her thing so that she can chime in on the conversation.”

Bird’s daughter Lizzie has also expanded her social development through performances.

“She’s performed several times with a church group and at a banquet,” Bird said. “Plus, she now leads a music worship at the home-school academy two days a week.”

But beyond the academic improvements and the people skills music education can bring, parents enjoy seeing their children proud of their own accomplishments.

“I love seeing her hard work pay off,” Jones said. “Sometimes, she’ll just say, ‘Mommy, listen to what I can play now.’”

Scudder said music provides a big confidence boost for her daughter, Hayden.

“When she gets out of the car and slings that case on her shoulder, she just looks proud,” she said.

The benefits come back to parents, too, Bird said.

“It brings me a lot of joy to see it all come together and have a purpose,” Bird said. “My daughters love it when it clicks, and it becomes something they choose to do and not something they have to do as part of their studies. Those are good moments.”