Understand emotions. Singing about feelings helps
babies and toddlers learn the words to describe their emotional
experiences (“If you’re happy and you know it . . .”).
The fact is that music evokes feelings—even when there
are no words. One recent study found that babies as young
as 5 months old are able, under some conditions, to discriminate
between happy and sad musical excerpts (Flom,
Gentile, & Pick 2008).