They'll Thank You Later

"Tiger Mother" Amy Chua and daughters Louisa and Sophia.

Parents, make your kids stick with their music lessons:

research, published in September in the Journal of Neuroscience, showed direct evidence that music training has a biological effect on children’s developing nervous systems.

As a follow up, the team decided to test whether the level of engagement in that music training actually matters. Turns out, it really does. Researchers found that after two years, children who not only regularly attended music classes, but also actively participated in the class, showed larger improvements in how the brain processes speech and reading scores than their less-involved peers.

“It turns out that playing a musical instrument is important....We don’t see these kinds of biological changes in people who are just listening to music, who are not playing an instrument”