BYU Alum Shelle Soelberg Hosts “Let Them Play” Symposium to Inspire and Encourage Young Musicians
In a time when rising anxiety, depression and screen time dominate headlines on the mental health of children, BYU alum Shelle Soelberg advocates for a remarkably simple solution: let children play. In 1998, Soelberg founded Let's Play Music — a music curriculum that focuses on returning children to the basics of play — which recently hosted a two-day symposium entitled “Let Them Play.”
Soelberg received this strike of inspiration while sitting in Susan Kenney’s class at BYU. It was the first time that Soelberg encountered a play-based approach to teaching music. “I tell people that her class was my awakening,” Soelberg said. “That was when I knew my life goal, my purpose in life — everything I was going to pursue.”
Following in the footsteps of Zoltán Kodály, Carl Orff and Émile Jaques-Dalcroze, Soelberg began teaching the Let's Play Music curriculum just six years after her college graduation. Let’s Play Music redirects music teachers to focus on the fundamental skills of play.
Music education classes with Let’s Play Music are nontraditional. Soelberg states that children in their first year of piano lessons can be found tossing bean bags, playing tone bells and jumping — they do not even touch a piano during this first year. “These children do not know that they are learning piano,” Soelberg explains. “They just think they are playing games with their friends.”
This June, during the “Let Them Play” symposium, Soelberg helped educators across North America implement play-based learning in their classrooms. Over 250 educators and mental health professionals gathered for keynote addresses, workshops and roundtable discussions exploring the critical role of play in children’s development and well-being.
The event was centered around psychologist Jonathan Haidt’s book “The Anxious Generation,” which suggests that dwindling opportunities for free, unsupervised play have contributed to the mental health crisis in children and teens.
One of the event’s keynote speakers, Emilee Knell, is a professor of music education and director of the BYU Young Musicians Academy. As a specialist in early childhood music education, Knell spoke on the importance of bonding, sensory play and physical connection for infants and toddlers.
Soelberg said that Knell “focuses on the zero-to-five age range, when emotional development is most fragile — often there is not enough bonding time, eye contact or physical connection with parents.” Her keynote helped music teachers understand how to reinforce healthy attachment and exploration in their youngest students.
One such student that was impacted by Let’s Play Music’s unique curriculum was Truman Walker. Truman was diagnosed with reactive attachment disorder (RAD) at a very young age and did not speak or look at his parents. When he started Let’s Play Music at age four, Truman came out of his shell. “He still would not talk, but he would sing,” Soelberg recounted.
Today, Truman is studying at the New England Conservatory to become a concert pianist. He returned to perform at this year’s symposium, bringing the room of educators to tears with a heartfelt original composition. “He still carries the emotional scars of his early trauma,” Soelberg said, “but when he plays, he emotes through the music.”
As stories like Truman’s remind us, play is more than fun — it’s foundational. By reintroducing playful learning into music education and childhood routines, we may unlock not only creative potential, but also a key to emotional resilience in a generation that desperately needs it.