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.

[Meredith Pizzi]

[Rachel Lighty]

I have seen this behavior in many sessions or just in observation, but in one session in particular, the child was fidgety and the mother was trying to have him sit on “his” spot on the circle carpet. This was causing the child to get upset and even more fidgety. I encouraged the mother to allow him to move around the room or wherever he felt he needed or wanted to be during the session, as long as he was still engaged. Once the mother allowed him some independence, his affect brightened, he was moving to the music, and appeared to be more engaged in the session then he had before. This client was in the independent stage, or working towards this stage in his development.

[Tracy Schoenberg]

In the school I used to work at, a lot of older kids still seemed to be in the awareness and trust stage. I used lots of repetition of familiar songs that were repeated every day as well as develop songs with a strong beat. Some could grasp an instrument like a maraca or tambourine, and some just listened and looked at me (or away from me depending on their mood). We had really great instruments in the music room like a xylophone bass bar you could put their feet or hands on to feel the vibration as I would play. They really enjoyed slow songs with wave drums or rainsticks as well, and multicolored lights with songs for sensory experiences.

[Gwendolyn Van Baalen]

I work with a set of premature twins in the awareness stage. In the presence of music, they display most of the behavioral changes described in this week’s information, including: changes in movement, audible breath, and facial presence. They are particularly responsive to their mother’s voice and to simple, familiar, consonant songs. They have had a very rough time feeding, and the influence of a musical intervention is particularly evident when their mother sings to them during mealtimes.

[Alice Sorensen]

I recall working with a young boy on the autism spectrum, and once during the session, he spontaneously began singing a song that he probably heard on the radio (it was a hit at that time) – and reading the slides and watching the videos, I recall now that the melody of that song is composed of “do do re re”, a major second, and now having consumed this week’s material, it makes more sense to me why that song in particular appealed to him. He also had a fast internal rhythm and especially enjoyed moving to music.

[Jessica Triana]

I have the privilege of witnessing my patients experience music at all of the developmental levels through my work. It is the awareness level that I may find the most fascinating. A moment that continues to impact my work was one with a 4 year old boy experiencing music at the awareness level. When we first began working together he had experienced a life of significant neglect and was deemed deaf, mute and globally delayed. With the initial strums on the guitar, I observed a change in his facial affect and body posturing. He turned his body towards the guitar and I placed his hands on the back of the guitar’s body. He retreated, smiled, and reached his hand back out. He responded positively to changes in timbre and volume. When he produced his first vocalization – a loud, wailing screech – nursing came running to find him slumped over the guitar, laughing.

[Anonymous]

How wonderful to hear of all of your work and how you are seeing the developmental stages in your clients. Tracy I have also found these stages to be helpful even with older clients.

[Cassandra Reyna]

During my internship, I had the privilege of working with a premature nine-month-old who had a trach/vent and spent the first nine months of her life in the NICU. She spent the tenth month on the Stable Vent Unit as her parents were trained to care for her medical needs. Because she had spent nearly the first year of her life in and out of surgeries, as well as heavily sedated with pain meds and hooked up to machines, her development was certainly impacted.
At the beginning of our work together, she was certainly in the awareness stage. I would allow her to simply find the source of the lullaby and eventually challenged her to turn her head to locate me. As her medical condition improved and her reliance on the pain medication decreased, she began to explore her oral motor skills as best she could with the trach. We worked on bilabial sounds like the letter “B,” and she would practice this while I also assisted her in grasping a rattle. Usually she would drop it, but she would move in synchrony with the music! As our time together came to a close due to the end of my internship and her discharge home, she did begin to purposefully shake the rattle and move toward that independence stage! Working with this little one really ignited my passion for getting kiddos off to as optimal a start as possible. We certainly did not want her medical status holding her back cognitively.

[Tracy Schoenberg]

I admit my elderly clients were really fun too- and I used similar songs in a more mature way

[Marchele Gilman]

I have been working with a client since age 3. I have had the privilege of watching her rapidly progress and catch up to her peers in development in many ways. She just recently turned 6 and is functioning in the responsibility stage. This week, I presented a familiar song with words changed slightly, I sang one phrase and paused, giving her the opportunity to create an ending. She did, singing the line and spontaneously supplying new words to the song. This is the first time she has done this. She smiled and laughed at what she created.

[Alison Albino]

I have seen children in all different developmental levels through observing Sprouting Melodies classes during my internship. What really sticks out to me is the children in the Sprouting Melodies 5 course who range from 4-6 years old. These children are experiencing music in the responsibility phase. Each week they are given the opportunity to choose their own music activities from four activities laid out around the room. They are so wonderful at imitating and singing along and coming up with their own ideas!

[Anonymous]

Thank you all for your thoughtful posts. I enjoyed reading them.

[Beth McLaughlin]

I had a student a few years ago who was very fearful of the music therapy environment. He was one of 6 students and 4 staff. It was pretty overwhelming for him. Rather than have him sit with the group, we gave him a chair in the large closet connected to the classroom. He sat in there and sang most of the songs with a staff sitting in close proximity. He would sing with a microphone and the amplifier in the larger classroom so his friends could hear him. As he became accustomed to the routine (through much consistency and repetition), he grew to trust the environment. He slowly came out of the closet area and inched his way towards the group. We allowed him to make this transition on his own terms and he became an active and independent participant.

[Elizabeth Ferguson]

For me a moment that I saw a child with failure to thrive, THRIVE in music! Just starting to crawl at 18 months old, this young boy was quite motivated by the guitar. Placing myself a couple feet out of reach from him I strummed and sang his favorite song, Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. After recognizing the song, he watched as I played and sang, the second time through he started to scoot himself forward, which turned into his crawling for the first time and reaching up to strum with me! His grandmother was in tears seeing him crawl for the first time and it was amazing to be apart of this moment! I would say he was in the trust phase of musical development.

[Flora Whitmore]

I, like a lot of the other contributors, have seen clients at lots of different developmental stages, however, I am currently working with a group of six kiddos working on communication and social skills and most of them are just coming into the responsibility stage, but there is one little guy who is still working up his nerve to participate and he appears to be somewhere between independence, control and responsibility, depending on the activity. I brought out Animal Boogie today, and after struggling with many other interventions, he suddenly became very animated and initiated movements, sounds and identified colors. I also had this great moment yesterday, where a little girl who is in my therapeutic playgroup at a local community center, who often likes to run up and strum the guitar and sing herself songs had herded the rest of the adults and a few of her peers into a corner and was conducting them in a rigorous rendition of our opening song and commanding them to shake their shakers after session had ended. She had pretty good command of the group! She is solidly in the responsibility stage and just an absolute joy to observe after session. She remembers all the melodies and likes to change the words to suit her purposes.

[RaeAnna Zinniel]

So far I’ve only had one practicum with a child and though she was 7 I would say she was in the Control stage. She was a lot of fun to work with and I can’t wait to experience more developmental levels.

[Ayelet Weiss]

During one of my fieldwork placements in a children’s hospital, I worked with a patient who was severely hearing and sight impaired. Focusing on the awareness level, we brought and ocean drum and used hand over hand to help her move the drum slowly from side to side so that she could feel the beads moving and the vibration of the drum. She began to independently move the drum and smiled when feeling the vibrations.

[Virginia Caldwell]

I now have the ability to describe what I am seeing with my kiddos! I have a 2 and 3 year old and I have watched them progress through awareness, trust, independence and with my oldest control and some responsibility. Their different responses I think will help me reassure parents that their child is receiving the music. My oldest is very involved and very much an extrovert. He is super expressive through music immediately. My 2 year old was really observing and absorbing more than I gave him credit for because he did not respond as my first did. One day he broke out in song at the dinner table and repeated small portions of a melody to a Disney song that we had been singing that I didn’t even know he was paying attention to. They love to wiggle, pound and bang in music. It has been more of an experiment, this training has really helped me to focus and be more intentional with our music time as of late.

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