Developmental Stages

[Meredith Pizzi]

Reviewing what you heard today, describe a moment in your practice when you saw a child in one of the developmental stages. Post your story to the board.

[Amy DiLabio]

Several years ago I provided music classes for a pre-school/day care. It was wonderful making music with these chldren and care givers. At the time I was not particuliarly aware of the stages of musical development, so it is interesting for me to think back and put into context a past experience. I introduced a song that I had heard and adapted called, “I feel.” In the song the children sing together, and then there is pause for each student to sing how they are feeling. Whle we are singing we are tapping our kness and swaying in time to the music. The children in this group were in the Responsibility stage of musical development. Most children responded with feelings such as, happy, great or tired. One child responded that they were mad. I could see a great deal of frustration in this childs face and body language. The child then began to sing why they were mad. They were mad when their older sibling hits them in the arm. Before I knew it each child wanted a turn to express their own frustrations with siblings or parents. We sang in an angry voice and grumbled as well to express how each child was feeling. This gave the group a chace to express empathy and validate their peers feelings. it helped them to see that they were not alone in their feelings, and that is OK to feel mad sometimes. To bring things up and back, I took the song in another direction and stated in song, “I feel like singing a song….” I then passed the music on to a student who understood to sing something they felt like doing at the time. This gave the students the opportunity to refocus their thinking with in the contet of the same song. It was wonderful to share in the experience of music making and sharing of things that bring frustration as well as pleasure to the student.

[Alyssa Kereki]

I am currently working one-on-one with a middle school student with an intellectual disability. We just started our sessions last week, and his aid has joined our sessions to help him with the transition. When I was reading about the five musical developmental levels, I immediately thought of this student because he does not seem to fit into one single level. At times, he seems completely disconnected from the music and I wonder if he is even aware of the music surrounding him. Since our relationship is still very new, I understand that I need to develop rapport before he trusts me and that he may simply be choosing not to respond. Sometimes he will only participate if his aid encourages him, which reminds me of the trust stage. I have also found that his musical responses are extremely short in duration, which can also fall under the trust developmental level. At times, he demonstrates his independence by playing random instruments of his choosing, but so far this has been a rare occasion. Based on his responses during our sessions, I feel comfortable saying that he has not yet reached the control or responsibility levels. There are definitely issues with trust and awareness, so I am planning on keeping those developmental levels in mind during our future sessions.

[Leigh Giglio]

From birth through present I have always incorporated music into my children’s daily lives. It’s something that I’m comfortable with and I know the developmental importance for them. I have a distinct memory of a time when my daughter was only about 3-4 months old and we were developing trust. I was rocking her in the rocking chair and we were both just staring at each other. She began to coo and I would match her pitch and sound. After I would stop, she would begin again. After going on for a while (about 5 minutes), I began to change the consant sound and she would try to imitate me. If I stopped for a long pause and smile, she would start to reach up to my mouth indicating she wanted me to sing again. As she got older our musical “communicating” changed from quiet cooing sounds to changes in dynamics, along with musical babbling sounds. I know this isn’t a clinical related memory, but it was the one that stood out most clearly in my mind to describe a musical developmental stage.

[Elizabeth Schwartz]

What beautiful stories! Thank you.
Leigh, I often point out to other early childhood professionals that very little children can recognize and imitate pitch long before they formulate words!

The important thing to remember about the developmental levels, is that children (or students) should be always moving from one level to the next. Development is dynamic. Our goals center on providing opportunities in which movement from one level to the next can happen. Sometimes, though, the disability is too great for vertical movement. Then we look to expand the level horizontally by providing as many experiences in as many different ways within that level as we can.

[Tamara Strom]

My youngest current client is 5 and is in the responsibility stage of development. He takes great pride in setting the room for music and caring for the instruments….particularly the guitar. When playing, he enjoys shifting up the tempo and dynamics both musically when he is playing an instrument, or verbally when he requests a particular tempo or movement within a song, and can modulate from one tempo or dynamic to the next most of the time. (Though he often confuses soft with slow). He loves taking leadership roles in his music, by requesting songs or activities, and leading the activity while I follow musically. In recent sessions he has also requested to play my guitar, and was able to hold down a chord while strumming and singing part of the song. He can also start and stop on musical cue such as in freeze dancing, (though will often continue moving with a mischievous grin expressing that he knows he is supposed to stop but is choosing to continue.). He demonstrates that he is able to follow directions and imitate, but also take initiative and ownership of his musicality.

[Laura Montesano]

I immediately thought of this little guy I’m working with right now who is three years old, he has very limited language but he is SO musical. I would say that he is in the trust stage (and beginning to dip his toe into the independence level). He is highly responsive to pauses within music. He’s beginning to say his first words through familiar songs- during pauses within the music he not only attempts to approximate the word but also the pitch (he impresses me with how accurate his pitch is…his approximations of words are less accurate). Whenever he engages in play I often use embedded songs with him- similar to the car song that Beth shared, it is often within those embedded songs that he learns new words and uses them functionally within his play, as we play the pauses get longer and he attempts to fill in the words/pitch more consistently. He was playing with a ball toy, one of those toys where you drop the ball from the top and it runs down a short maze to the bottom, and it would often get stuck (which often times was my doing 😉 and we sang, “Come out”- in a simple song and each time I’d pause a little longer, now he uses that phrase consistently with that toy at the appropriate moment. 🙂

[Cindy Humphreys]

Two boys in the playgroup that I co-facilitate have recently moved into the responsibility stage of development. When I come into the room, they watch as I take out my guitar to sing a transition song from play to group time. As I get ready they run over to the circle area and sit down, anticipating the routine. A few weeks ago they began sitting away from their mothers and will sit in the middle of the circle. They have become peer models to the other children and assist when putting away instruments or other materials. As pointed out in our reading, they are direction followers and take their role very seriously.I have known one of the boys since he was born, and it has been such a pleasure to see him develop into such an independent person.

[Lisa Spall]

Working for sprouting melodies has given me so many of these experiences that it’s hard to share just one! I led classes ranging from very young infants to 3-5 year olds. There were so many times I referenced this material as I saw them learning and growing throughout the several weeks in class. A great example would be in one of the moderately young classes of 8-12mos or so, in which I had a set of twins. One of the girls displayed some developmental delays, while the other was experiencing some social setbacks. With this information of what I should be expecting to see at that age and all the time I had spent with many other typically developing children, I was able to see characteristics and indicators of delays without being informed of them beforehand. Just some examples from the more delayed child I observed: sitting up straight, but no crawling, lack of baby babble, no protective reflexes (great to see during the lap songs), and very minimal instrument exploration. What was wonderful was to see this little girl move through the stages as we had music together over a few months time. She began to display independence as she crawled about the room, exploring other people and instruments, transferring them from one hand to the other. She developed trust, smiled more, tolerated (and loved!) activities such as the scarf canopy, and made much more musical baby babble. Her whole body moved to the music and she even screamed in excitement frequently. It was truly a moving experience to see her develop these skills over time and know that music and the musical environment created in this group played a part in facilitating that development. Every time I think of her, it puts a smile on my face and reminds me that every song and every activity I do has a purpose.

[Elizabeth Schwartz]

I was able to write some stories of children moving through the levels in the 2011 book “Developments in Music Therapy Practice: Case Study Perspectives” edited by Meadows and available through Barcelona Publishers. The chapter is called “Growing Up In Music”. Check it out if you can.

[Angie Carter]

When I met “Ben” at 18 months he was “lost”. Having just met him it was difficult to know whether it was a sensory processing disorder, on the spectrum or something else all together. He still does not have a diagnosis, though his treatment team obviously has thoughts. What struck me during the lesson was that even though he was not an infant when I met him, he was only working towards the “awareness” stage. Since that time, a year and a half ago, I have watched him move through stages to imitiating learned movements to music in the “control” stage, just recently. He mainly demonstrates skills in “trust” and “independence”. There are days that “awareness” is our focus, looking for that eye contact, looking for the musical interval that will spark his attention, the joint attention and I love the phrase facial presence. Today I was able to look at each the kiddos I see in a different light and assess in a different way than HELP assessment skills and I enjoyed the using these stages.

[Robin Jacobs]

What comes to mind are two different parent education moments. I believe they would fall into the area of control. One new mother was tense because her baby was crying. I noticed, and pointed out to the mother that the sound/pitch of her baby’s cry was in tune with the music we were singing. That it was alright for her baby to cry. That’s one of their means of communication at this point. I suggested she move around the room with the baby quietly humming along with her child’s sounds. That had a calming effect on both the baby and the mother. Another child, a toddler, was moving around the room in various ways. The mother wanted the child to sit down with her in the circle. I noticed, and pointed out to the mother that the child was moving in rhythm to the music we were singing to. That it was fine for him to move around the room himself. That children take in everything through their senses and are always absorbing what is happening in their environment. The child eventually wandered back and sat down with the mother on his own.

[Wei Ming Loi]

This week I’ve had the experience of having a client who seemed to have moved from the trust stage back to awareness due to an incident in the session. He was initially in the trust stage, responding in a reciprocal manner and reaching out to play on the instruments. But he stood up on the chair at that instance and it was really an unstable service so I reached out, hold his hand and got him back to the ground and his musical interaction changed immediately. He went back to the awareness state, being aware of the music but did not seemed to be making much of the reciprocal interaction with me for that session anymore. It made me feel how important it is our role in facilitating development in children and how I have to set up the room more cautiously to facilitate the interaction.

[Elizabeth Schwartz]

One reason I like to work within the developemental levels is that there is often is not definite diagnosis which we can use as a guide and the levels can give us guidance on goals and treatment plans as well as choosing interventions.

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