Going After Gold – What the Olympics Tell Me Not to Do

I have never been a big fan of watching sports, especially not on television. (Well, I did watch the Super Bowl commercials!)  It was a little easier for me in person, but at my son’s early baseball games I remember that I would watch the other parents from the team and shout and clap when they did. Peter Jumping

The Winter Olympics, though, is an exception.  The pictures that you see with this article are not of some random athlete. They are of my nephew who is a ski jumper on Team USA. This is his second time at the Olympic Games. The event is only one of the many competitions he enters each year as he travels around the world in search of that elusive top spot.

As my sister and other family members were leaving for Sochi Russia, the rest of the family were sending along their “Best wishes” and “Good Luck” as well as the signature phrase “Fly long.” For some reason I asked my sister what she would say to her grown son right before the first jump.  She quietly told me that her final word of encouragement to him is always “Relax”.

Jennie and Peter

Later on as I watched the talking head commentators weigh in on the merits of each contestant, I heard the same sentiment echoed again and again. “She wants it too much. She needs to just relax.” “He is not focusing on what he needs to do. He should just relax and keep his head in the moment.” What a contradiction! In order to go after the gold, you need to let go of thinking about going after the gold.

I began to mull over this conundrum in terms of my own work as a music therapist and as a provider of developmental music experiences for young children and their families. My responsibility in this work is to help children meet individual goals or gain developmental milestones. I feel the burden of ‘making progress’ or ‘meeting benchmarks’ all the time.

But what I have found is that if I go into a session rigidly determined to have the child meet a certain goal it almost always backfires.  I get too involved in one little response and how “I can make that happen”.  Neither the child nor I get fully involved in the music. The harder I try, the less seems to occur. Conversely when the session is fun and engaging and satisfying musically for everyone, the child intrinsically responds in the way I had hoped for when designing the experience.

You would think that after almost twenty-five years in the field, I would remember this. But I know that I frequently slip and slide down the slope toward checking off items on a list rather than being present and responsive to the child in the musical moment.

Olympic Flag

So, here is what watching the Olympic Games has taught me to ‘do’ and’ not to do’ that I hope to take into my early childhood music work.

1. Go for the Gold

Go for the gold, don’t go after the gold. Envision the moments of pure musical joy in which each child and grownup is fully engaged. See in your mind the ‘fist-pump’ of elation when everyone is making meaningful music together.  Know what each child needs with a clear picture of how that music will look, sound and feel.

2. Create a Training Plan

Figure out the steps and elements needed to get to those great musical moments. Find a coach or mentor to help you. This could be a real person or a book, article or blog. Make sure the steps, or the music experiences, you create will lead to the ultimate goal.

3. Practice, Practice, Practice

This means you as the music therapist or music leader, more than the child, need to practice before each session. The music experiences become part of your musical self. The music is not something that you place ‘on’ the child. It is something that becomes second-nature and free that you share with the child.

4. Relax and Fly Long

Finally you are at the top of the mountain or on the oval of ice or in the circle of children. All of the work preparing for the music now needs to be put aside. Relax! Trust yourself and trust the music. Most importantly, trust that within the music experience, the child will be able to pull out all the stops and rise up to their potential.

Sochi Russia

So even with all the talk about gold medals, the Olympic athletes tell me that to be successful you need to let go of the medal and focus on the moment.

Go team!

Beth

Time Marches On…And So Do Young Kids

New Year's sunglasses in the outline of 2014.

Happy New Year!

Once again, I watched the Times Square festivities from a comfortable, warm couch. The television showed thousands of people dancing the minutes away until midnight. The music was pumping loud and rhythmic. The crowds looked energized and focused toward the deadline separating old from new. As excited as everyone seemed, though, the music at the stroke of midnight turned nostalgic and almost wistful. While I drifted off to sleep (the first activity to bring in the new year for me), I started thinking about the mixed emotions that surround wanting to move forward and wanting things to stay the same. [Read more…]

Spin Around. Fall Down. Musical Structure and Sensory Challenges.

Have you ever played the Dreidel game?

Or used the Dreidel song in your early childhood music groups? It is a well-known and popular children’s song and game sung during the Jewish holiday of Chanukah.

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                I have a little Dreidel

                I made it out of clay [Read more…]

Sprouting Melodies Sing at Home – Halloween

pumpkin

Halloween can be fun and exciting; or Halloween can be scary and anxiety producing for very young children.  How can we help little ones to understand this once a year transformation of everything familiar? Here is a song to assure children that underneath the costumes and masks, “I am still just me.”  Just follow the link below. [Read more…]

Early Music Experiences: Do We Need Plastic Trophies?

As a parent, I had to make a lot of choices about what experiences I would give my kids as they grew up.  Maybe it wasn’t really as much of a choice as I thought, since I had grown up in a family where three things counted: Family; hard work; and music.  So those were the things that I most wanted to pass down to my kids. [Read more…]

‘Come Gather Together’ The Importance of Synchrony in Early Childhood Music Groups

Maybe it is because I have either been in school or worked in school settings for most of my life that I think of fall, and especially September, as the real beginning of the New Year.  Here where I live, the air becomes crisp and the leaves fall from the trees making room for a particular brightness and clarity in the sky.leaves 1

[Read more…]

School Readiness: Music as a Key Ingredient in Effective Early Learning Environments

I walked into an early childhood classroom recently and saw a scene that at first made me shudder, and next made me think of the much mentioned term – ‘school readiness’.  The young teacher was sitting in the usual place surrounded by props and puppets and pleasant visuals.  From the pictures on the easel board, it was obvious that she was in the middle of ‘teaching’ one of the core concepts from the school’s curriculum. [Read more…]

Being Musically ‘In Irons’ – Recognizing and Respecting Fleeting Moments of Change

Growing up by the water, it was inconceivable to me that other kids did not have beaches and boats as their playgrounds. I guess we learned our way around the water just as kids from the city learned their way around the streets and subways.  We knew to make plans by the tides; to judge wind direction by the breeze on our cheek; and how to tell a big storm was coming. [Read more…]

Fostering Freedom in Music

It’s the time of year when there is a cluster of patriotic celebrations in this country – Memorial Day, Flag Day and Independence Day, the 4th of July.  As a child, I was raised to value and respect the liberty and opportunities available as a citizen of the United States.  I tried to pass these beliefs on to my own children while teaching them that these privileges came at a price and a responsibility. The lesson was very close to home, since their father was an officer in the Air Force and was deployed during the first Iraq war. As small children, they experienced the burden of responsibility to freedom when saying goodnight to Dad meant writing him a letter or waiting for a phone call from overseas. [Read more…]

What My Tone-Deaf Dad Taught Me about Music

 

One of the best things about writing a blog is the opportunity to tell the story of an everyday hero whose strength and depth might never be widely known but who has so much valuable wisdom to share. The hero for today is my Dad. [Read more…]

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