center for early childhood music therapy, children's music therapy, music programs for infants, toddlers, preschoolers, music classes for young children, music therapists
Join Elizabeth Schwartz, MA, LCAT, MT-BC for the online event Together With The Beat: Expanding Your Early Childhood Music Toolbox. The event will take place via Zoom on Wednesday, August 30, 2023 from 8-9pm ET.
I was totally thrown off during a short trip to a local store during the height of the pandemic. As I approached the counter to pay, the woman at the register looked me directly in the eye and cried out ‘Miss Beth!’ Since I was fully masked, I couldn’t imagine how someone could recognize me, especially someone who was not at all familiar to me. She quickly came around the counter and again called out, ‘Miss Beth.’
My confusion must have been clear as she continued to explain that she remembered me from our time together when I led music groups for young children at the local library. As a music therapist, I had the privilege to facilitate integrated parent-child groups that focused on building community and a place for all within developmental music making. This woman and her son, a young one with many developmental challenges, were part of that program.
She burst into singing one of ‘our’ songs, and then emotionally shared that the music group was one of the things that kept her going through those early years of her child’s growth.
This story might not be so unusual except for the next thing this mom shared. Her son had gone on to thrive with this early support and was now attending a local community college.
The integrated, community-based music program was the foundation for Sprouting Melodies and for the Sprouting Melodies training. The training focuses not only on musical development, but on how developmental grownup/child music-making can create a community that supports children and grownups. It’s not just about the kids, but about those who care for them and the communities in which we all live.
If you are like me and want to use your music therapy education and training to make a long-lasting difference for all people, we invite you to join the next Sprouting Melodies training. The ten-week, completely on-line course is designed to give you the knowledge and experiences to make this kind of impact in your community. Our next training begins soon, and we welcome you to be a part.
Beth
Who’s More Stressed? The screaming toddler being strapped into their car seat? Or the parent trying to strap the toddler in?
I say, both. At this time of year which is supposed to be so magical, it sure seems as if there is a lot of stress out there.
What can I, a music therapist, do about it? A lot!
In my decades of running early childhood music groups, I was always amazed at the transformation from the beginning to the end – usually stress to smiles. In developmentally focused music making, we can help parents to better understand their child and give them both a safe and supportive space just to ‘be.’
This is one reason we started the Sprouting Melodies Training. The course makes use of your expertise as a music therapist, and gives you the knowledge, experiences, and music you need to serve the children and families of your community.
What’s unique about the Sprouting Melodies Training? We focus on both the child and the parent as people. Me and Me…Meaningful expectations. Music for engagement.
The Sprouting Melodies® program offers music therapists a chance to use your education, skills and experience to bring the best possible early childhood music experience to families in your community.
23 CMTEs available for you to complete in your own space, in your own time.
Registration is now open for January 2023!
What exactly do you get in the course?
Ready to register for the Sprouting Melodies Training?
We can wait to see you inside the Sprouting Melodies training!
~ Elizabeth & Meredith
When Meredith and I started Raising Harmony, we were determined to provide solid, effective information on music, young children, and families. After hearing from the 100s of music therapists who have taken the Sprouting Melodies Training, we’ve learned that the training provides so much more. Through taking the training, people have:
What more can you do? Come join us for the next Sprouting Melodies Training and find out.
Click the link below to register for our next course beginning March 30, 2022.
https://raisingharmony.com/training/sprouting-melodies-training-info/
Hope to see you!
Elizabeth
Not ready for this round of training? Visit www.RaisingHarmony.com to download 5 free songs composed specifically for music therapists to learn and use.
Actually, it has been tax filing week. Each year I seem to get more and more bogged down with finding and filling out forms. I like to think I’m organized, but every spring proves me wrong. The stress builds as I frantically search for Box 3 (B) subsection A, Item 1 on small pieces of paper that I can hardly read. If only there was a reliable system that I could trust would be the same from year to year. As I drifted off to daydream about numbers jumping off the page to taunt me, I began to think about how much stress is caused in our everyday lives by the demands of having to understand things that make no sense. And of course this led to thinking about how this kind of stress impacts my young students with disabilities all day, every day. That same wide-eyed panic that I feel when faced with a clutter of torn bits of paper and crumpled receipts is the same look I see in the eyes of my little ones when they face new or novel situations.
Being able to absorb and integrate novelty is critical for young children as they develop. Luckily, as music therapists, we do have a system that can give even the newest idea or experience a context and a familiar reference – musical scales. All of the children that I work with not only seem to ‘get’ scales, but they can demonstrate on a daily basis that they ‘get it’. Music cognition research fully supports this innate ability to ‘get’ familiar scale patterns. One of the music researchers that I often go to for information on music and patterns is Dr. Aniruddh D. Patel. You can read his comprehensive 2007 compendium- Music, Language, and the Brain – or access some of his lectures on YouTube or at http://nihrecord.nih.gov/newsletters/2013/06_21_2013/story2.htm.
This upward scale sequence is so familiar to us that we might take it for granted in our work with children. I use it to introduce a new experience or to get us ready to start something. Often I will just sing or play the single tones with no other harmony and wait with an extended pause before finally moving to the ‘Do’. The silent anticipation of the children as they wait makes the air almost crackle with expectation. Those focused seconds of listening and regulating are followed by such excitement as they break into music making. They get it.
Descending down these five tones to the fundamental ‘Do’ gives the children a clear signal that things are coming to an end. I often pair the tones with words that explain such as “I sure had some fun”. Hearing this sequence again and again at the end of a session or end of an experience will help the children internalize the patterns of completion. Most of the students I work with will vocalize this descending scale along with me. And then I hear them using the same sequence independently helping to make the world a more understandable place.
Whew, I feel calmer already! Okay, now back to making sense of those tax forms.
Enjoy the music!
Beth
I happened to see this amazing video this morning while wasting time in cyber space. It is a very short story about new research into very tiny Pygmy seahorses. What does that have to do with early childhood music therapy? Well it turns out that the new-born babies adjust their color to fit their environment rather than sticking with their genetic coloration. Our little children also are very adept at adjusting to the environment we create for them in music.
1) Sing less, so that the child can sing more.
2) Change the key or tempo of the music to fit the child, not me.
3) Repeat music experiences more so the child can become master of the music.
4) Expect and respect the music of the child.
5) Share music more with all the grownups in the child’s environment: Dad, Mom. sibling, teacher, bus driver, friend.
Best wishes for the New Year to you and yours.
Beth
Maybe it is because I grew up as the second child. Maybe is it because I chose to devote my life to a profession, music therapy, that requires constant explanation and promotion. Maybe I am really just obnoxious. But I love it when respected scientists report findings that support the things that I have known for years. So I am particularly crowing this summer with new research out of McMaster University in Ontario, Canada. The study finds significant correlation between synchronous musical movement and social skill development in young infants. In other words, when we bounce to music with our babies, we are opening a world of connections that go way beyond keeping the baby entertained.
In my early childhood groups and in the Sprouting Melodies program we have seen this connection develop week by week. The children that move and sing and play along with their grownups to developmentally responsive music show huge growth in their interest in others and their engagement in being part of the social group. They watch their peers more closely and choose to play with them or near them. The relationship with their grownup becomes one of joy and togetherness rather than stress and conflict.
Why is this important? Because we are primarily social creatures who live and work and play and learn in groups. Those early social connections are the foundation for later success in our families, our schools and our communities. We know this and now hard science is giving us a strong backup.
As early childhood music therapists, we often feel the need to justify our value. But with science like this behind us, we can confidently articulate to parents, educators, administrators and funding sources why good quality, developmentally focused early childhood music programs are essential.
To help you out, the article citation and abstract is below. Thanks to the researchers and McMaster University, there is also a video explanation of the findings that you can share. As an added bonus, I have also included a link to a Sprouting Melodies Sing at Home video with a brand new song using music and synchronous movement that I wrote for little ones just about the same age as the babies in the research. Sing it, move with it and share it with your families and your colleagues.
And maybe, just for now, it okay for all of us in early childhood music therapy to put on a bit of attitude and say loud and clear – “I told you so!”
Enjoy!
Beth
Cirelli, L. K., Einarson, K. M. and Trainor, L. J. (2014), Interpersonal synchrony increases prosocial behavior in infants. Developmental Science. doi: 10.1111/desc.12193
Abstract:
Adults who move together to a shared musical beat synchronously as opposed to asynchronously are subsequently more likely to display prosocial behaviors toward each other. The development of musical behaviors during infancy has been described previously, but the social implications of such behaviors in infancy have been little studied. In Experiment 1, each of 48 14-month-old infants was held by an assistant and gently bounced to music while facing the experimenter, who bounced either in-synchrony or out-of-synchrony with the way the infant was bounced. The infants were then placed in a situation in which they had the opportunity to help the experimenter by handing objects to her that she had ‘accidently’ dropped. We found that 14-month-old infants were more likely to engage in altruistic behavior and help the experimenter after having been bounced to music in synchrony with her, compared to infants who were bounced to music asynchronously with her. The results of Experiment 2, using anti-phase bouncing, suggest that this is due to the contingency of the synchronous movements as opposed to movement symmetry. These findings support the hypothesis that interpersonal motor synchrony might be one key component of musical engagement that encourages social bonds among group members, and suggest that this motor synchrony to music may promote the very early development of altruistic behavior.
A video abstract of this article can be viewed at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IaqWehfDm7c&feature=youtu.be
Girls like pink. Boy like blue. Dads always roughhouse. Moms always cuddle. Childhood is happy. Adulthood is serious. These stereotypes still seem to stick despite the truth that none of these qualities apply to all people all the time. It struck me this week that this same way of trying to make generalizations about the very complex human condition is what makes many people still believe the myth of major and minor. Major is always happy. Minor is always sad. Kids are happy so they must only like major music. Minor music is not happy, so kids won’t like it.
Well the reality is much, much more complex. In our everyday life, there are hundreds (or maybe thousands) of shades of emotions. It is no different for young children. Yes, there is happy. But there is also content, or pleased, or excited or exuberant. There is sad, or somber, or thoughtful, or quiet. There is mad, or angry, or frustrated, or confused. In the old days, I would have said that the emotions in early childhood are like boxes of crayons. (Do children still use crayons?) If we limit the number of crayons that we give children, we will only ever see the colors that are in the box. We then might make the assumption that those are the only colors a child likes or will use. But if we give a child a large choice of colors (Crayola 64 was my favorite) than we can begin to see all the subtle variations that splash across the paper as the child draws us a bit of themselves.
Back to the myth of major and minor. Major music and minor music absolutely is connected to human emotion. But there are many shades of major and many shades of minor. By respecting and playing that shading we can choose to support an expansive view of how children feel by giving them a full range of musical experiences including major and minor. This is often jarring for music therapy students or professionals who come to visit my sessions or listen to me present. They have a hard time letting go of the myth of major in early childhood work. The parents I work with are sometimes taken aback when I begin to sing in minor or in another mode. I have heard them say “Kids won’t like that” or “That doesn’t sound like kid’s music”. But after a lifetime of sharing all kinds of music with all kinds of kids, I know that young children will respond to major and minor and modes. And once they are caught up in the music experience, they seem grateful to have a place where they are free to choose and express all the shades of themselves. Try it!
Take a listen to this new song I wrote for very little ones and their grownup that explores the movement between major and minor. Sing it with your own little one or the little ones you work with. Teach it to Mom or Dad or Grandpa or Grandma. And then let me know if you too think that there is a mood of major and minor myth.
Enjoy singing!
Beth
