Share how you can explain to parents the difference between music for development and music for skill building.

[Meredith Pizzi]

[Rachel Lighty]

Skills are more cognitive and academic. They are functional and help with day to day things, whereas development is needed to help in the growth of your skills and functional aspects of life. For example, recognizing familiar faces is a part of development which helps in the skills of recognizing people, a functional skill for everyday life.

[Anonymous]

Hi Rachel, thank you for posting. This question can be a little tricky. Meredith and Beth are looking at the difference between using music to specifically target skills (like eye contact or sound pronunciation) as opposed to supporting overall development. This helps us to understand to differentiate and help families to see how Sprouting Melodies is different from clinical music therapy and other early childhood programs.

[Tracy Schoenberg]

Music development is seen through observable behavior and physical changes that occur most of the time for children at a certain age. For instance, little babies are establishing trust with their caregiver. They can be encouraged to establish this trust by incorporating bonding songs. These repeated experiences teach the child to trust the world. Other important songs that encourage development are becoming ‘me’songs that encourage this concept. Music helps explore abstract concepts of ‘me’ that are important but hard to put into words such as friendship, embarrassment, and imagination.

Music for skill building is a way to develop emerging and developing skills such as language and communication, movement, and social and emotional interactions in SM3. Encouraging 2 handed instruments, literacy skills with songs, connecting scarves with 2 friends or taking truns on drum to promote social connection, and using music to promote marching, running, and jumping enhance these developing skills. Signing while singing may help communication as well.

[Marchele Gilman]

Music for development is used to encourage development toward a milestone. For example, clapping hands and playing a drum paired with song that encourages these skills toward independence. The music supports and encourages this milestone.

Music for skill building encourages development toward a certain skill. For example, I might use music as a structural prompt by writing in words that encourage gross motor movements or vocalization. I am targeting that specific skill.

[Alice Sorensen]

Music for skill building is different because while children and families will come out of SM humming melodies and aware of new songs, it’s not purposefully FOR learning new songs or for the sake of making music, although that’s certainly an incidental happening! The music itself is focused on skill building, such as language and social cues – we’re building the skills of sharing and communication, or teaching how to make a specific sound for pre-language development – that is development of a skill, happening through music interventions.

[Cassandra Reyna]

In my personal notes on the videos over these past two months, I have found myself repeatedly stressing that it does not matter, for example, if the child taps their toes instead of clapping their hands. We are not looking for the specific skill of hand clapping but, rather, supporting the developmental level independence, of knowing that they can create change in their environment.

Music for skill building would be requiring children to develop specific skills, such as finding the correct keys on a piano or playing a drum three times in order to teach the child how to count. This is a functional skill utilized in everyday life. Music for development, in my opinion, allows for more exploration of the music, the instruments, and how they relate to the environment. The children learn skills that are more qualitative than quantitative–to trust caregivers and the environment, as well as to become more independent.

[Beth McLaughlin]

Music for skill building requires an assessment of specific deficit areas and a prescriptive treatment plan for music interventions that will target the identified needs of the child in areas of cognitive, social, motor, or language development. It is also more dependent upon the relationship between the child and the music therapist. Music for development focuses on providing an environment that is shaped by music strategies designed to nurture the child’s overall development with more of a focus on the parent/ child relationship.

[Flora Whitmore]

Music for development is music making that presents opportunities for children to participate in musical activities which incorporate enrichment opportunities needed for growing and learning and hitting milestones. It’s creating a musical environment where those skills can be fostered naturally through specific types of activities but it is neither charting or requiring a specific response.

Music for skill building is where I would say the therapeutic aspect comes in- setting goals to reach targets to help a child develop a specific skills. There are specific interventions, and as Beth said, assessment and treatment plan and a different timeline.

[Alison Albino]

Music for skill building is much more specific. To me this means using music for specific, measurable results such as increased motor movement through instrument play or increased verbalization when answering questions posed in a musical structure. Music for development is using music as an encouraging tool. We can use music to target areas, which requires a real knowledge of those developmental stages. Repeating music structure/experiences is important for development because it allows us to really see how children are progressing. Bonding songs are a great example of using music for development. The youngest children are facing toward their caregivers, but as they grow through the developmental stages, they begin to face toward the group members, until they are eventually able to do the bonding songs on their own!

[Anonymous]

Thank you all for posting. Great insights!

[Gwendolyn Van Baalen]

I appreciate the previous posts, which helped to clarify my understanding of this terminology.

From what I have gathered, music for development encompasses the use of music strategies to support general development and provide opportunities for children to attempt and practice milestones at their own pace, in the context of the musical environment.

Music for skill building is a more targeted approach that utilizes music interventions to facilitate growth toward a specified goal or a targeted skill.

In order to further clarify this concept for myself, I applied it to my current work. A child who is seen at home for individual therapy has an IFSP that state specific goals or skills. In individual music therapy sessions, a music for skill building framework is primarily applied and MT interventions are designed to target these goals (e.g. using the signs for “more” and “for me” to communicate needs). Should this child attend a center-based MT group, in which a music for development framework is applied, they will likely have opportunities to practice the targeted skill being worked on in individual therapy, but the music experiences in group will be designed to provide opportunity for the enrichment of a variety of developmental levels and the exploration of a variety of individual skills.

[Jessica Triana]

Based on my understanding, music for skill building is the use of music to intentionally elicit a specific, predetermined target (e.g., CV babbling or identifying body parts). In contrast, music for development is the use of a musically-rich environment to support one’s progression towards larger-defined developmental milestones. Sprouting Melodies provides opportunities for skill performance rather than objective-driven clinical interventions. Despite this, the songs presented in these modules can definitely be used for skill building.

[RaeAnna Zinniel]

Everyone explained this so well so I will put it briefly how I understand it. Music for development works on the child as a whole which intern helps their skill development. In music for development we don’t work on achieving particular skills like clapping hand instead of tapping toes where in skills we would work on those specific skills.

[Elizabeth Ferguson]

Music for development is for growth and development of the whole child verses music for specific skills. Music for skill mastery are more specific, the child will walk four steps with feet flat vs child will walk to the music.

[Ayelet Weiss]

Great question and great answers! Definitely helpful in putting it into words to then use with parents…

Music for development is using music to support typical and healthy child development. For example, using a bonding song to encourage caregiver and child to practice and take part in the very necessary stage of bonding. Promoting healthy bonding in a musical context will set the child up for healthy development into the next stage of Trust and Independence.

Music for Skill Building is the use of music to practice and help master a specific skill (which also will be important for development in a different way) such as crossing midline, clapping hands, socialization, language etc. These skills can be turned into specific goals in a clinical setting once the child is assessed.

[Anonymous]

Thank you Ayelet!

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