[Camryn Gallagher]

I love all of the considerations you mention here, Courtney! Especially your comment about young parents seeing examples of healthy caregiver/child interactions. I have met quite a few parents who have told me some version of “I’m just trying to do better than my own parents did.” Exploring this within the safe, familiar means of music really opens the door for a lot of these young parents who want what’s best for their child but are so hard on themselves.

[Camryn Gallagher]

Community-based music therapy provides families with opportunities for connection, education, and fun in a way that is both evidence-based and fun! Music is so adaptable that it can meet all kinds of needs, including different learning styles, cultural considerations, and children regardless of disability. To have that resource that offers so much right in your own community is so important, and from my experience, very very needed. I think also a community-based MT program could be a good starting point for families that could also encourage them to connect with their community as a whole and find other opportunities in the community as well. In our EI music group, we typically use the last session of every cohort to talk about specific resources and list them out for families to take home. The ability to seek out these resources and take advantage of them is a skill that these caregivers will carry throughout their child’s entire life.

[Camryn Gallagher]

I agree that individualized attention is highly needed in a lot of communities! I do think that some of these needs can be met within a group setting, but I personally find myself struggling to accommodate this. I’m still a pretty new clinician and sometimes just feel so overwhelmed by the duties of leading a group that I end up worrying about certain families feeling left behind or unheard. Maybe this just comes with developing my own confidence and comfort with group-leading, but I also feel inspired to do more check-ins with families throughout a group now – because you’re right, it’s hard to feel like you’re welcome as a member of a group/community if your own sense of individuality isn’t being honored! I like how Meredith shared in one of the videos that she often will ask parents if they have any requests or songs they need to hear again to remember how they go, and will definitely be incorporating that and similar methods of reaching out to caregivers in the future.

[Camryn Gallagher]

Lydia, I LOVE how you describe the work as “humbling” and an honor. Working in pediatrics is truly special and I miss it every day! Hospitalization comes with a lot of trauma that doesn’t often get talked about, because it’s just impossible to really understand without experiencing it yourself. But it sounds like you’re doing so much to help families stay connected and create positive memories in a space that can otherwise feel so challenging and dark. I’ve always felt that our backgrounds allow us to provide something to families that other providers cannot, and that alone is so valuable!

[Camryn Gallagher]

Working in EI in central MA has shown me how much families need accessible community-based programming for child/caregivers… affordable, scheduled for times other than M-F 9-5 to accommodate working parents, developmentally enriching, and led by providers open to neurodiversity. I work with a lot of families who struggle to feel bonded/connected to their child, as well as lacking a support system of friends/community members who understand what it’s like to be a parent to a young child. Music could absolutely meet all of these needs by providing a space for these families to feel included, to learn about their child and themselves, and to feel like a valuable participant in their own communities, all while being held by the safe and familiar agent of music. I also have noticed plenty of ableism, even from clinicians in my own organization, towards Autistic children in particular. Sometimes just from a lack of spaces that are safe and welcoming of children who are not “typical,” and at worse it entails their deliberate exclusion from activities. This is something I actively want to change by creating a space that IS safe for all means of exploration and recognizes all the different ways that children listen and learn. Music provides a space where there is no “wrong” way to play, as long as no one is getting hurt.

[Camryn Gallagher]

SINGING: Awareness – movement changes in response to hearing singing. Trust – matching pitches accurately about 50% of the time. Independence: Playing with/finding humor in vocal glissandos. Control- Independently singing and or/requesting to sing songs. Responsibility – Singing familiar songs with melody and rhythm.

INSTRUMENTS: Awareness – Look towards the source of a sound. Trust – reaching out to touch an instrument. Independence – Using hands to strike percussive instruments. Control – Playing instruments with varied dynamics. Responsibility – Using instruments in a call-and-response style musical game with others.

MOVEMENT: Awareness – Repetitive, rhythmic movements. Trust – Purposefully moving body along to music. Independence – Clapping hands. Control – Starting and stopping when the music starts/stops. Responsibility – Recalling and reproducing simple movement patterns.

LISTENING: Awareness – Increased attention in response to consonance. Trust – Responding to sudden silence by turning to look for the source of the sound. Independence – Attending to preferred music. Control – Anticipating the end of a familiar song/musical phrase. Responsibility – Listening/attending to the music of others.

[Camryn Gallagher]

In my practice, I and another MT run a weekly music group for ages 18months-3 years. Several months ago we changed the structure of the group to include about 20-25 minutes of just allowing children and families to explore a selection of instruments together. We place them around the room to encourage children to choose which ones they are interested in and feel motivated to move towards/pick up. We try to stress to caregivers that the purpose is exploration and experimentation, and we encourage them to get down on the floor with us, follow their child’s lead, and play along.
We also have an “arts and crafts” portion of group where we combine music with visual/tactile sensory activities like finger painting, sensory bins of sand, play dough, etc. We’re singing throughout the whole group, but this tends to be when we put away the guitars/instruments and instead sing acapella. We typically sing short, repetitive songs based on what children are doing with their new tools.
After art, we move to movement songs! Again, we keep these simple and repetitive, which often leads to adapting familiar songs like nursery rhymes and Laurie Berkner tunes, and sometimes even pop songs. I also have yet to meet a group of kids who don’t fall in love with Elizabeth’s “Wiggly Jiggly Car” – before we start it, we always remind parents that the child is welcome to move to it however they feel comfortable, whether they’re sitting on their caregiver’s lap, standing up/bouncing, waving their arms, or even just listening/watching their peers. On that note, listening is a big part of everything I do in these groups and during individual sessions – I guess I just didn’t appreciate that fact until now. Just like Meredith, I find myself using a lot of “stop” and “go” during familiar songs. Often times we combine this with singing by pausing just before the end of a musical phrase to see if any children “fill-in-the-blank.” I also try to encourage caregivers to notice how specifically children show us that they’re listening, even if it’s not through eye contact or other “typical” signs of listening.

[Camryn Gallagher]

I love that you changed the words to “Just like mom” at the end!! That sounds like it was really sweet moment.

[Camryn Gallagher]

Another “Just Like Me” experience – it actually made for a great tickle song with an almost 3 year old today!

[Camryn Gallagher]

I sang “A Car on my Knee” today to a 31 month old who loves cars, trucks, buses… anything with wheels! It ended up being a perfect musical activity to help me and his mother respond to what he was doing in the moment. It actually ended up combining two of his pre-existing skills and interests – cars and identifying body parts – in order to practice an overarching goal of joint attention and back and forth turn-taking. Ever since I bought Elizabeth’s first songbook and learned what an “embedded song” is, I have been using them frequently, writing my own in the moment, and coaching families on how they can do the same.
I also used “Just Like You” during an assessment of a 3 month old today. At first I started by just humming the melody because I was curious about focusing on/emphasizing the descending intervals. She fell right to sleep on my lap, and then the family and my evaluation team asked me to teach the song to them too!

[Camryn Gallagher]

I love what you said above about changing the meter and focusing on the chorus – that seems like a really nice way to adapt songs of all genres!

[Camryn Gallagher]

I work in the South Central region of MA and service a pretty diverse community of children and families. One of the first challenges I faced as a relatively new professional was meeting a parent who told me they really didn’t know any of the nursery rhymes that I considered “traditional.” None of them were really a part of her own family’s culture when she was growing up. I had to learn how to incorporate music that doesn’t typically get categorized as “Children’s songs” into my sessions. From then on, during the initial MT assessment process I would ask parents/caregivers what their own music preferences are. A lot of the responses I’ve gotten are classic rock, country/bluegrass, reggaeton, and heavy metal. I also have a lot of children on my caseload who love the songs that they hear in the soundtracks of their favorite movies. The “Cars” series in particular is very popular, and a lot of the parents I meet (especially the country music lovers) tend to genuinely enjoy listening to the music in those movies along with their children! Another enjoyable challenge has been working with families who do not speak English. In particular, I work with quite a few Spanish-speaking and Portuguese-speaking families. Sometimes this means we sing translated versions of English nursery rhymes, and sometimes it means I get to learn children’s songs that are traditional and/or popular in other parts of the world.

[Camryn Gallagher]

Apologies if this posts multiple times or is difficult to read, I was having some technical difficulties!

[Camryn Gallagher]

Awareness: responding/behaving differently when hearing changes to a familiar melody, relaxing to a “Sedative” song and getting excited during a more playful/upbeat song, becoming upset or turning their head away from discordant pitches
Trust: intentionally vocalizing along to a song and starting to match pitches, repetitive and rhythmic (though not always synchronized) movements, exploring instruments by reaching out to touch, hold, mouth, kick them
Independence: find humor/fun in musical surprises like fermata and glissandos, using their hands to intentionally hit drums and shake shakers, engaging in music with their whole bodies, ie clapping, patting their laps, shaking their head
Control: prioritizing imitation of language/words over pitch/melody, dancing spontaneously/imitating dance moves of others, pounding and banging on instruments/surfaces
Responsibility: can understand and play structured rests within a familiar song, recognizing and reproducing “loud” vs “soft,” wanting to be “part of the group” and combining the skills of listening and playing

[Camryn Gallagher]

I have been working with a child who will be 3 in December and I have been visiting 2x a month for almost a year now. In this post I’ll call him “J.” In reviewing this week’s material, I thought of J, because I think I actually watched him move from independence to control. During one session, his parents shared that they were feeling overwhelmed by his new, strong desire to make choices and be in control. He began to use words to tell me what he wanted or did not want. We found he would often say “no” when asked if he wanted to sing or dance. I could tell at first that his parents were a bit discouraged by this – “we have a MUSIC therapist who comes all this way, and J doesn’t want to make music with her!” But I tried to reassure them that I wanted J to feel the power of his “no.” If he’s choosing to put the instruments away now, then we will! Being in the “control” phase means we spent a lot of time learning to take turns with his siblings and handling the big feelings that would result. We also found that he responded really well to a “loud vs soft” game while he was strumming my guitar. We took turns being the “leader” who decides when we sing/play softly and when we sing/play loudly. This activity was the longest that J sat and engaged in something with me, and it provided his parents with a simple, easily repeatable activity that he enjoyed and that they could continue practicing with him after I left.

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