Developmental Stages

[Siobhan Rooney]

While most of the children that I work with are younger (2-5) and predominantly in the independence or control stage, I also have several groups of school age children (6-8 yrs old). Over the summer I can remember one group in particular where I witnessed these school age children entering into the responsibility stage! It is certainly rare that I ever get to see this stage at all in my work so when this happened it was a magical moment! We had a couple of new members so I thought a good way to introduce ourselves to each other was a drum circle. Each child had their own drum (as did I) and we all said our names while playing a rhythm to match the syllabic value of our name. I had intended this to be more of a gathering or greeting song/chant and also a good way for me to remember the new names. They loved it so much and they realized that they could create original rhythmic patterns. We each created our own rhythms and it became a kind of call and response game. Each child took turns as the leader, playing a rhythmic pattern for the group and the group would play back the leader’s rhythmic pattern. You could feel the excitement in the room and you could see the look of empowerment on each new leader’s face! This lasted the entire session. The next week when they came back to the music room, they all came in excited to have another “drum party” (their words). We played “drum party” for the entire six weeks of summer program as per their request. As the weeks went by we expanded our “drum party” to include a marimba, a gong, some chimes and I moved over to the piano. They were really listening to each other and creating their own music with purpose. It was one of the greatest experiences I’ve ever had as a music therapist.

[Elizabeth Schwartz]

Nice! Thank you.

[Author]

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