Mellom liv og drøm. Vuggesangens helsefilosofiske betydning

Abstract

Caregivers around the world sing to their infants and children. This text argues that parents’ singing lullabies for their children promote well-being. On the basis of 20 Norwegian parents’ experiences, interpretations, descriptions and assumptions, from the east part of Norway, this interdisciplinary text explores health qualites of singing lullabies in parenting, with particular regard to parents’ own innate or learned musical resources and musicality in the wide sense of communicating the vitality, meaning, sympathy, sensitivity, appreciations, motives, paradoxes, and interests of life. The text argues that lullabies can be an important, nice, natural, and necessary oasis in parents’ and the children’s life. Singing lullabies may promote emotional and mindful presence, sense of coherence, safety, and stability. Through musical, multi-sensory enactments, the child’s body and soul are “embraced” and “nourished” - by “caring love” and “sounds on the calm”. The act promotes comfort, nourishes the sense of self, and facilitates the fall-asleep-process under certain important conditions like “expressive timing” and “attunement”. The act represents an in-between state of play and practical concern, reality, and dream, where the child gradually turns inwards by means of the imaginative and creative “vehicle” of lullabies. The methodological approach consisted of collecting data by qualitative in-depth interviews, video-recordings made by parents themselves, and stimulated recall. Allowing the lullaby-event to come to the surface in its authentic, contemporary, and genuine setting, concepts and categories from health-, social, and philosophical psychology served as partners of dialogue.