Audio is pure sound: the sounds we value enough to record; music, stories, the sounds in our environment ... In a nutshell, it is all about listening. Through listening, we learn to 'listen' better, learning to hear what's going on around us, hearing where others are coming from; learning to be patient and to feel empathy.
Through listening we learn to be attentive, to concentrate, and to give time to others, valuing their feelings and ideas. Listening places us fully in the world, instead of the world being centred only in us. If we want a more caring world, a world where children grow to be concerned about the people and creatures around them, we need to actively foster the development of listening skills. Pure audio recordings are an excellent tool in this process.
Children’s audio is all about pure sound. It provides stories without pictures and music without film. It opens the doors of imagination, visualisation and empathy. Sound comes into the child’s ears and is processed in the brain, where, in children's fertile imaginations, they add their own pictures, and stir up their own emotional responses.
Studies show that audio enhances learning, stimulating the imagination and developing creativity. It moves us to tears, and uplifts us to great heights. Audio books and recorded stories are particularly valuable in developing a vivid imagination; just as adults say ‘The film is no where as good as the book,” children find the magical world they create when listening to a story is well beyond Hollywood’s capability to re-create!
We learn to hear in many ways. When we are fully focused in one sensory mode, either listening through our ears or, for hearing-impaired children, 'listening' through other senses, we develop an acute ability in that sensory mode. Everyone has the potential to develop heightened abilities in each of the senses.
In learning to hear, children eventually learn to hear what being said at a deeper level; they become perceptive. They learn to consider many points of view, being exposed to many ideas and opinions that differ from their own. They learn to 'smell the flowers' so to speak; to be fully present with birds and creatures in the natural world.
The end result is that our children flower, maturing in awareness and empathy. They grow into a new generation of parents with something valuable to contribute; adults experiencing increasingly deeper levels of meaning in life.
Last Updated: August 24, 2007