Personal Reflection

[Julie Palmieri]

Post to the board a personal reflection of what you personally will bring to early childhood music therapy based programs?

Be sure to come back and respond to others as well.

[Erika (TeamRH)]

Hi Everyone!

I hope you are all finding the training materials easy to navigate. I know most of you have a very busy schedule. Try to come back to read other’s submissions and interact the best you can. We find this really deepens the training.

Also, don’t forget to save your responses in a document in the event that you want to have your responses for use after the training has completed and in the off chance there is a technical issue.

-Erika

[Christine Wick]

I was trained within a sensory integration model and will definitely be bringing this approach to early childhood. I currently work with a team that includes speech, OT, and PT. Being able to collaborate and speak this same ‘language’ of prioritizing sensory needs and achieving an optimal level of arousal as foundation has been such an awesome experience. I love working with families and I bring my passion for meaningful connection to this population.

[Erika (TeamRH)]

Hi Christine,

You may enjoy learning about the STAR Institute. It was founded by Dr. Lucy Jane Miller who was a major researcher in sensory processing as well as created an assessment widely used with pre-schoolers with disabilities. Her books are also great. The institute now has a training for other professionals outside of OT which is interesting. https://sensoryhealth.org/

How wonderful to work with a team of other professionals. I always found working within a team to be so valuable for my work.

[Leslie Aldrich]

Hi Christine, your team sounds really amazing! I would imagine having that focus on sensory needs would really make your music therapy based group connect for everyone.

[Leslie Aldrich]

I really want to focus on bringing an inclusive environment to my music therapy-based program. My community is fairly small, so when I think about the needs of children and their caregivers as I develop that program, I see needing a safe space for children of all abilities and I want to bring that as a focus. With the information in this course, I will be able to really focus on developmentally appropriate content that I can adapt for kids with typical development, as well as kids with non-typical development and hopefully blend that into a meaningful group for everyone.

[Melissa Neitzel]

Due to past work, I have knowledge of infant behavior and parent bonding in the early stages. I also bring patience and acceptance of where everyone is in the given moment. I typically can go with the flow and feel I can adapt with change or the unexpected. I think the outline of development is helpful in anticipating what may happen (or not). I want each the child and caregiver to feel like they are in a safe, accepting place.

[Katelyn Caruso]

I like your focus on creating a safe and accepting environment. That is so important for the whole family to thrive.

[Katelyn Caruso]

I think my own flexibility and background as an educator would lead to a welcoming environment where parents and caregivers can find space to develop their relationship with their child, and to support their development. Little things like understanding that putting things in their mouth or throwing a tantrum can be developmentally appropriate can make those things a little less frustrating as they come up, and I believe that the more you know the more you can feel confident in your decisions as a caregiver and best support your little one. I think that empowering parents/caregivers to feel confident and competent will lead to little ones being supported and cared for.

[Leslie Aldrich]

I love your focus on empowering the caregivers and that being directly linked to the littles feeling as supported as they can.

[Erika (TeamRH)]

Thank you all for sharing what you are bringing to early childhood music therapy work. It is wonderful to get to know about each of you.

[Maggie Johnson]

To this work, I want to bring a “beginner’s mind,” in part, because I feel like a beginner in this work having relatively small experience with young children, but also because I think an intention to return to that mindset will help me be more child-focused and new-parent focused. I strive to bring a trauma-informed and intersectional feminist lens to my work, and lately I have been focusing more on the impacts of colonization on music education and music therapy education in the US and reconciling what that means for my experience, my practice, and in supervision.

I love leading groups and I try to bring lots of fun, dynamism, non-judgement, musical sensitivity, along with a confident leadership presence. I think my experience within a wide range of systems of care can help me speak up and advocate for children and families needs. I have the experience of building deep, long-term relationships with my disabled adult clients and their families. I have quite a lot of experience with non-violent communication, a little bit with dalcroze Eurythmics, and right now I am really interested in emotion theory as it relates to musical development and music perception.

[Kimberly Werner]

Catching up on some threads that seem to have gone MIA on me!

I hope to hold space for an encouraging, inclusive, and diverse early childhood MT program. I personally do not agree with working from a behavioral/ABA perspective (regardless of age, diagnosis, or presentation), and am adamant about not running my sessions or groups as such. I find that early childhood programs often have behavioral components to them, but that does not feel congruent to a flexible, adaptive, and inclusive environment. I would love to have children & families representing multiple ethnicities and socioeconomic backgrounds to be present in the same group, as I think that it’s a highly valuable experience for children to interact with others from different life circumstances than themselves. I’m also aware, unfortunately, that this doesn’t always work, especially in a city like NYC where economic differences are so prevalent, and that these types of enrichment groups often target a select demographic. It’s my hope to be able to explore ways to break through barriers that hold that system in place.

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