[Adrienne Salmon]

The needs of my clients are so very diverse. I really consider myself to be extremely lucky, because the job that I have allows me to meet such remarkable people each with different stories. I have some young children, ages 2-5, with congenial and acquired blindness. I have some clients, ages 7-19, on the Autism Spectrum, which certainly is a broad spectrum! Some of those clients have coexisting IDD, ADHD, etc. I have adults at the beginning stages of Alzheimer’s and Dementia. I have adults with various and varying levels of IDD diagnoses. I have pre-school and high school classes of children and young adults with any variety of diagnoses. I consider myself incredibly lucky because I really get to do so many different things on any given day, and to learn so much from so many different individuals.

[Adrienne Salmon]

It would be both very easy but also very honest to say ditto to literally everybody above me. I have a family who has requested to put music and lyrics to address certain behaviors of the client. This is something that I learned about time and again in studies, and getting to put it into practice has been wonderful. Now, after watching this video, I understand that my value in that role means a lot to the family, whereas it seems just standard for us, the therapists. It’s really nice to think back to clients and families and realize what you can bring to them to enrich their overall quality of life as individuals and family members. The knowledge we have gained through studies and training allow us to come to families from a perspective that touches upon fun, but is also deeply rooted in neurology, biology, etc. making us attractive to families with young children because childhood should be all about the fun, shouldn’t it?

[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.

[Adrienne Salmon]

I can relate with Nicole saying that I recently relocated about a year ago, and it is hard to call New Haven ‘home’ yet, although it is starting to feel that way. I also don’t work specifically in the city that I live in, so I can’t say that the ‘cultural’ influences of my ‘home’ community have begun to affect my practice yet. My home community growing up was very diverse, and that inspired me to continue to diversify my repertoire, so that has definitely helped my practice. However, the communities I serve and have served in my time here, I am finding, request a lot of Christian music and Country music, which I had not been very familiar with before my move. However, some of the clients also request John Denver and The Beatles, Johnny cash, some prefer Disney classics and children’s music, my caseload is pretty diverse, as is my original home community, so it all comes full circle.

[Adrienne Salmon]

The most valuable lesson that I took away from this week’s assignment is the importance of understanding a child’s developmental levels, and working within them. I work as a nanny for a quite advanced 16 month old, who I bought sidewalk chalk for way too early.. Needless to say, he had a very colorful mouth. I will be applying understanding of just what a typical child should be able to do, at what age, while also keeping in mind the possibility of development not being 100%. On the flip side of that, as Stephanie said above me, I have worked with children of varied ages where I have wondered if certain actions that I was observing were a ‘red flag’ or not. I will definitely be getting to know these developmental expectations better and applying them to my arsenal as a music therapist to make sure that my activities are always developmentally appropriate.

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