This past weekend I got to spend more time than usual with my little three-month-old girl. Her floor gym (where she spends a good deal of her play time grabbing and/or smacking stuff) plays music for her, Twinkle Twinkle and Animal Fair and Skip to my Loo, in calypso/reggae arrangements that were charming and clever the first four hundred or so times we heard them.
I want to expand her musical experience, of course, so the other day during Play Time I got out one of my low whistles to play for her. Might as well start getting her used to the harsh realities of sharing a home with a whistle player.
I played through a couple of Irish tunes, which my sweet daughter completely ignored. That was actually a better result than I dared hope for, but not particularly entertaining. So on a whim, I started playing “Twinkle Twinkle,” with the same syncopated rhythm as the music on her floor gym.
Katie’s head instantly swiveled my direction, eyes and mouth wide. She watched me breathe, watched my fingers move, and as I cycled through her floor gym songs, she listened. And even though the sound itself was very different, she knew.
Then I went back to Irish tunes, and she suddenly got very interested in a stuffed elephant. Guess I’ve got some work to do.
When my daughter was an infant, I’d often play the low whistle for her. Sometimes it was the only thing that would calm her down during one of those periods of screaming of unknown origin. It was slow stuff, Crested Hens, Rest Sweet Nymphs, other lullabies. For awhile when she was 5-6, she insisted that I play the flute for awhile after she went to bed. She didn’t care whether it was fast or slow, it was just something comforting that was part of the routine.
The whistle can be very soothing for small but also big children. It is beautiful. My 9-year old son still asks me to play when he gets a bath, (and the whistle sounds best in bathrooms). He feels at ease then. Sometimes I play some soft melodies to fall asleep. All 3 of my children have grown up liking it. My wife has grown up NOT liking it though.
My daughters race to get their own whistles (homemade PVC things) when I reach for mine. The girls are all of three years down to 1.5 years old. It’s the youngest one that loves it the most. Maybe I was a bit better at whistle by the time she came along though. As an aside, I’ve recently come back from a 10 day motorbike camping trip that covered about 2500kms(1100 miles approx) and each night either sitting around the campfire (if it was allowed…Serious fire bans most places) or the MSR fuel cooker I would play a tune or two while my mates sang the song. I would end the night by playing a couple of slow airs on the Low whistle by which time I could count on at least one of my friends having been lulled to sleep…at least that’s what they told me it was .
.