Beat Competence: A Natural Ability or a Learned Skill?

Beat competence Keeping a beat seems like such a natural thing, yet some kids just don't have it.
They just can't keep a beat.
You know those kids... they seem to be happy, energetic, love to sing, enthusiastic, throw themselves into whatever musical expression they love and they just can NOT keep a beat.
I feel it is spectacular! Almost unbelievably spectacular! I have trouble trying to intentionally NOT keep a beat and they can't keep a beat to save their lives. The Download I've had students like this.
What I notice about the kids who have difficulty keeping a beat is that they usually did not attend baby music classes, not mine or any music classes.
Those first 2 years seem to be the natural developmental period when beat competence is "downloaded" and "installed" in the body and they missed out.
Of course, there are children with obvious developmental, cognitive or physical challenges and while some of them are beat competent, we do not have the expectation they will be beat competent.

Those are not the children I am thinking of here.

Benefits I spent the first year of public school teaching as a learning assistance teacher.
I worked with kids (K- Gr.
10) who couldn't read, couldn't do math, couldn't print and couldn't spell. What I noticed (because I was also a music teacher) was that these kids all seemed to struggle with keeping a beat as well. When compared to kids who are competent, kids who have trouble keeping the beat also seem to have challenges with: learning to work the scissors, holding a pencil, learning to print/handwrite, skip with a skipping rope, move through the space without smashing into other people and some have trouble learning to read books. My 35 years of working with children has taught me that beat competence is both a natural-born ability and a skill that can be learned.

If your child can not keep a beat then you just need the right teacher to help build this skill.