Challenges of Providing Multi-Age Groupings

One of the first things I noticed when starting my current job was that the groups are often mixed ages of a very wide age range, which definitely has many challenges. For me, the biggest challenge is navigating different developmental levels, different musical preferences / ways of responding and finding the balance of attending to individual needs, while also still supporting the group in a cohesive way. As mentioned in the video / PDFs from this week, I agree that multi-age groups can often feel very chaotic at times.

I will be offering my first community music group next week and because we are advertising it as a free class, we are inviting ages 5 and under. I am not sure what the attendance will be like, but I have my notes ready to go with lots of different song/experience ideas for each category even though I know I will need to shift and go off script! As Lydia mentioned above, I am anticipating it being difficult to find the balance of attending to individual needs while keeping the flow of the group steady and secure. this group has been delayed before so mostly I am just eager to get the first one under my belt and then make adjustments as needed.

At my Early intervention center, the groups I currently run are 18 months-3 years. Even though we are there to service the children enrolled in EI, our program emphasizes the importance of community so we always invite siblings and some older children (usually ages 3-5) who have “graduated” EI to join. This means sometimes we have a range from newborns to elementary schoolers. There was one day where we weren’t expecting one of our friends to be bringing his older sisters, and I felt myself panicking a bit because I could tell just how bored these sisters were! We ended up changing our language a bit so that we were encouraging them to participate because “you’re your brother’s best teachers! Look how happy he is to play with you!” Re-framing it and giving them a sense of responsibility to help gave them some more motivation to participate, especially during the movement and instrument songs. On the other end of the spectrum, sometimes it’s challenging when parents bring their much younger children along. I have found that most parents who need to bring a baby sibling along will keep the baby in their carrier or stroller throughout the group, as they feel it’s more “important” to focus on their older child who is enrolled in EI. We’ve been working on this by encouraging caregivers to hold the baby in their lap if possible, and by offering them instruments that are safe/more appropriate for babies to explore.

Similarly to what some other people have shared, the hardest part about multi-age groupings is being able to meet the developmental needs of everyone in the group while also keeping the experience enjoyable and entertaining for everyone. In order to maintain this balance, it requires constant re-evaluation from the facilitator to ensure that as many kids as possible (but hopefully everyone).

Challenges of multi-age or multi-functioning level groups are ever evolving. Some times is it engagement and other times it can be accessibility. It can some times feel like barely controlled chaos. BUT, with our skills and knowledge it can be rewarding. As always we need to be able to turn on a dime and reassess our original assessment of a group. I have found that using songs that work at many different developmental levels paired with modeling and suggestions to the adult/caregivers for each individual child can greatly help reduce my feeling of chaos and reach more kids.

Thank you all for your insights. I hope that you each can come back to read all submissions. I always find this question is a great one to get thoughts and ideas from others.

The challenges I faced with multi-age groups are not limited to:
-Struggling to share instruments or parents,
– Younger kids not wanting to take turns;
– Older kids not wanting to interact with younger siblings;
– Meeting the different needs of all family members might be challenging; – Keeping up with an equal level of engagement might be tricky, especially when one child is full of energy but another one wants to sleep.

I think one huge challenge about providing music therapy services to multi-age groupings is that each members developmental abilities and needs are not consistent across the whole group. This can be challenging when planning for session as interventions have to be tailored to each individual but also the group as a whole. You have to incorporate aspects which are challenging enough for younger students but also challenging enough for the older studnets in the group. Or, finding out how, if one of the goals is group cohesion, figuring out ways the older students can help encourage or support the younger students in the group.

Like others have said above, I believe a big challenge of providing music therapy services to multi-age groupings is the differences in developmental abilities and needs. This was one of the topics that we talked about in the conference call and one solution we talked about was creating little moments for individual opportunities, but always bringing it back to a group opportunity after a few rounds of individual. Like Maura, I also have many things in my back pocket that I can pivot to or change up!

I once had a group of children who were diagnosed or suspected of ASD. There were six children with ASD, and their age range was from 24~36 months. Although their chronological age gap was not that huge, their developmental level had a huge gap. In terms of ASD, they have different sensitivity towards sensory input, different regulation and communication skills. At the first session, I had to forget about my session plan and follow the flow, observing their needs and responses to the music. I’ve learned that focusing on one child at a time and expanding to the group would bring them together and help them interact.

It can be challenging to run multi-age groups because you have to be aware that all the children are at completely different places in their development. You have to balance needing to have the repetition for the younger children, but also honoring the needs for individuality in older children and making choices. There is also a lot going on so observation is key and noticing where parents may benefit from some guidance especially when parents are needing to interact with multiple children.

I am cheating a little bit because I’m answering after our conference call, but what I’ve learned from you all about the challenge of multi-age groupings is to keep it inclusive. Billie mentioned having an adjusted age 8 month old and a pretty advanced 19 month old in the same class. Providing for both those level of needs while also being mindful of the rest of the group sounds like a challenge! But the solution Meredith offered, of telling the caretaker of the little one that this can be time just for them and their baby, while having the older child participate in more of the larger “nest” made a lot of sense! I think this is a tactic that parents of more than one kid have to utilize all the time. 🙂

It is really wonderful to experience multi age groups, and they also come with their own challenges. You have to find the sweet spot to engage everyone; enough challenge for the older ones and not too much for the little ones! It’s important to mend the music and make those observations to see where everyone is at. You also may give direction in different ways, one way for the older kiddos family and another way for the younger kiddos family.