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]

[Kerry Cornelius]

Recently, I began working with a very young child and his mother. As he becomes more comfortable with the environment in our music therapy sessions, he has started to discover and move into the developmental level of independence. When I place three different instruments in front of him, he immediately stands, investigates them and selects an instrument with no prompting. He will often make choices such as playing one instrument for a for long period of time (like the drum, which he will often want to play independently for 5 to 10 minutes), or many instruments for short periods of time (Egg shaker! Bells! Tambourine! All in about 30 seconds). He actively uses a choice board to select preferred songs and activities, as well as frequently positions himself away from his mom so that he can explore the room, and most often, my instrument bag. His favorite activities are “follow the leader” echo games, where he has the opportunity to imitate what I sing or play.

[Katherine Sestrick]

I’m going to refer again to the set of two year old twins that I work with. These kiddos are clearly in the “Independence” stage. I see these kids at their house and they immediately say “guitar” when I arrive. The boy twin will stand right next to me with his hands on the strings while the girl twin sits calmly on my other side, waiting for her turn. They use words to express their preferred instrument, with the boy twin preferring the drums and the girl twin preferring the sticks. They both use single words to make these request. They like to play along with the music and love start/stop games. The boy twin laughs and gets a huge smile on his face during these games. He also really loves sudden changes in dynamics/tempo and both kids can respond to these changes within a few beats. Since I am working on expressive language, we do a lot of leaving words off of endings of songs and phrases for them to fill in. Both kids are able to sing these words approximately on pitch, but are not yet singing full songs. Both kids also love songs that practice movement and following directions. Typically, both will imitate a movement when it is first sung/demonstrated, then move in to their own preferred movement (spinning or dancing).

[Katie Bagley]

One of my clients is currently on the verge between Independence and Control Stages of musical development. She is beginning to generally match pitches and follow familiar melodies of nursery rhymes, certainly has a fast internal rhythm, and loves to bang on the drum. We have been working on control and turn taking with a melodic tag on the end of verses “And now it’s time to stop!”, and repeating again. This is the only child I have independently seen with who is within this developmental stage, and I’m really enjoying working on turn taking and functional communication with her.

[Shonda Malik]

I have a three year old client with a potential diagnosis of autism although she is still waiting to be officially assessed. I have observed her displaying characteristics of the control stage. One of our recent goals was for her to learn to answer the question “what is your name?” I used a song with her and after two sessions she sang on the third session “my name is _____”. She seems to understand the question answer form AEB her not singing the question and just singing the answer. Another characteristic of the control stage is that she loves when I match my keyboard accompaniment to her instrument playing, with all of her abrupt stops/start, slow, fast, as well as mimic her vocalizations, and I in turn use different songs to lead her in imitating me.

[Stephanie Tassos Wohlsifer]

I must first state that I do not work with very small children. At present, my youngest student is a 6-year old girl who is a terrific singer. I have worked with younger children (4 – 5 years old) on the spectrum or with developmental delay, but at present do not have any clients or students who are very young children. However, my good friend Margit has a grandson who is about a year old and is definitely in that “biting” stage. On July 4th weekend during a get-together barbeque, little Tobey crawled over to me where I was sitting on the floor playing my ukulele (I frequently bring a uke to parties for potential sing-alongs) and decided he wanted to chomp on my wrist (I wasn’t playing at that moment). Then he started “humming” which I interpreted to be his way trying to imitate my music making. He was having such a grand time that I let him chomp away until Margit picked him up and said “he’s checking to see if you’re ‘done.’” (Margit is a real comedian and a professional musician). Definitely a sensory input/output moment for Tobey!

[Katie Romano]

Most of the young children I have worked with were in the hospital setting. Most of them were struggling between the independence and control stages. Some of the infants were trying to develop awareness. It became a goal to help support and increase their awareness through music. The musical characteristics described in the videos (such as intentional pauses and syncopation) really helped the infant track the sounds and develop security in the situation.

[Kasey Sollenberger]

I currently am working with two sets of twin boys in a group that are strangely similar. Within each pair, one of the twins is typically developing and the other is slightly delayed. It makes for a very interesting group session! One set of the twins are 2 years old and the others just turned 3. Both typical boys are in the control stage. They love to play along to the stop & go songs, imitate movements and melodies, and play instruments in various tempos. The developmentally delayed twins are just entering the independence stage. They are starting to explore and play instruments functionally, move their bodies to a beat, and imitate or repeat sounds. It is fascinating to me to be able to examine their development in comparison to one another!

[Christina Wensveen]

I am currently working with a preschool child with Williams Syndrome in her home. She is definitely in the control stage of development. She matches pitches well, and loves imitating words even though her speech is delayed. She also loves sudden changes in the music and the element of musical surprise. She has learned dance moves to a couple of songs and I think this helps provide meaning to the lyrics in the song. She also likes to control the session by singing her favourite songs spontaneously- even if we are working on a completely different song! I provide activity, instrument and song choices in the session for her, but also say “first we sing ___, then we sing ___” which has been working well.

[Nicole Sanabria]

Currently I’m working with a group of preschool children ages 2 1/2-4 that have autism spectrum disorders and/or display developmental delays. Most of the children in the group are in the awareness/trust stage, where they reach toward the source of sound, or demonstrate islands of joint attention, explore instruments, and will vocalize in response to musical stimuli. I use songs in a repititive fashion, however, not ignoring the emotional/sensory needs that the children need at various times. During these moments, I will use music creatively but with structure for the intent of exploring, and to just be in music. Recently, I recall during a musical experience where I utilized a natural minor scale to sing to support/encourage the children to acknowledge/explore a drum to beat or a cymbal to play. A 2 1/2 year old boy (the youngest in the group) was engaging in isolated behaviors (hand flapping). As I began to sing, I demonstrated how to beat the drum and crash the cymbal. Once I played the cymbal, his eyes looked up toward the me and the cymbal. As I went around the group to have each child explore the sound of both, once I offered him the mallet, he closed a circle of communication as I held the cymbal up high above our heads, creating a glissando with my voice, as I came to the highest peak of that glissando, I offered him the cymbal. His eyes were widely opened, as he smiled from ear to ear, he played the cymbal with much intent. It was the first time I have seen him more toward a sound source of music with purpose, to create his own music. Very powerful moment for him, as well as myself to have witnessed him take that step.

[Kathryn Costanza]

I only recently started working with children younger than 11, so it has been very interesting pairing this new knowledge with my client’s abilities of all ages. For example, a 17 year old on my caseload with spastic CP is in the Trust phase. He responds very strongly to preferred music, will visually track instruments, sounds, and people, and attend differently when the rhythmic, melodic, or dynamic content of the music is altered. There’s also a 3 year old with an unspecified neurologic condition on my caseload, and she is moving into the Independence phase, minus most vocalizations which is one of her areas of delay. She loves musical surprises and is highly motivated by glissando and dynamics, will rock and bounce rhythmically, inspects and transfers instruments from hand to hand, and is showing and expressing preferences in instruments, songs, and activities. It has been very fascinating to me to see the areas in which some of my older clients are still in the early phases of musical development and how understanding this knowledge has helped me to better address their needs.

[Adrienne Salmon]

Currently, I am working with a wonderful and very musical little four year old boy with acquired blindness due to brain surgery. Also from the brain surgery, he suffered a stroke and thus is working through some left side paralysis, speech/language delays, and other developmental delays. For most of our sessions, he is really in the awareness and trust stage; we are able to have meaningful musical interactions with him responding appropriately to musical opportunities, etc. However, the most recent session, he started showing stages of independence, singing a song for me that I did not know was one of his favorite. Until this point, we have used mostly nursery rhymes (which he loves, also in this session humming notes of Three Blind Mice and laughing gleefully when I guessed correctly) but he started humming the first few notes of Funky Town! I had no idea he has an affinity towards disco, and when I asked his mother, she said that her husband does play a lot of disco! So not only did he show independence in that session, he also showed how his home environment is affecting his preferences, and although he can not ask for them verbally, he is vocally requesting as well, showing independence.

[Jonni Fogerty]

The experiences that first come to mind are those I have had recently with my 3 month old niece. She is obviously in the musical developmental level of awareness. She often turns away from loud sounds. She shows a distinct preference for her mother’s voice (my sister), but also seems slightly confused by my voice (perhaps because it sounds similar to her mother’s?). She is just beginning to imitate facial expressions. She is especially fond of imitating people sticking out their tongues right now. It is quite interesting to see her reactions to recorded music. She prefers slower, more sedative music in the morning and the evening. However, she becomes upset if this music is played in the afternoon. She prefers to listen to more upbeat music in the afternoon.

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