[Jessica Triana]

Music therapists have invaluable knowledge about the role and implications of music in a therapeutic context at all levels of human development. We blend our understanding of the multidimensionality of music, child development, and family dynamics to create unique interventions of therapeutic benefit to our young clients and their families. Each early intervention clinician, regardless of speciality, maintains a scope of practice. I feel that our wide scope of practice allows us as music therapists to respectfully expand upon the work of our fellow therapist counterparts (eg. Occupational therapy) to provide rather comprehensive, motivating, non-threatening, interactive and fun interventions.

[Jessica Triana]

I greatly appreciated not only the songs but your insights into the potential applications for each song. I am always looking for more songs that highlight the tactile and vestibular senses for my patients with significant hearing loss. I had great success with “Wiggly Jiggly Car” with an individual patient. Our child life specialists now know this song as well so they can incorporate it into their play sessions. I am interested, although a bit apprehensive, to implement some more songs in minor. I am grateful for your compositions to help me ease into the minor modes, especially with groups.

[Jessica Triana]

The musical culture of Boston is rich with many flavors, influenced by multiple predominant cultures and subcultures. Working in a hospital, we see families and individuals from all over the United States and internationally (mostly Africa, Middle East, South America). When working with very little ones,the traditional children’s songs and rhymes are commonplace, but they may vary slightly based on the family’s regional origin. Parents’ listening preferences and habits definitely influence the children that I work with. I have gradually become more accustomed to a 4 year old singing Nicki Minaj or Drake to me.
Gwen, you bring up a fantastic point about the need to be sensitive when bringing in music that is different from the therapist’s home culture. It seems less presumptuous of me to bring in songs from a variety of cultures when I am running groups. Otherwise, I tend to let the patient and family let me know their preferences. Similar to Alice, I like to blend Latin or African-based rhythms with English lyrics adapted to meet the objectives of an intervention. The children in my daycare and early school-age groups really enjoy singing and playing to songs in other languages (favorites include one of the many varieties of “Ram Sam Sam”, “La Bamba”, and the somewhat odd “Atirei o Pau ao Gato”). I also have a standard I-IV-V hello/goodbye song in English, but we will sing the actual greetings and salutations in many different languages.

[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.

[Jessica Triana]

I am still fairly new to the profession but have directed much of my work towards children and adolescents. I currently work in a pediatric rehab facility and it just so happens that the majority of my census the past few years has been patients 0-3 years old and their families. I find a lot of joy and reward working with this particular population. I work very closely with our Child Life Specialists to provide on-going therapeutic play groups for our younger inpatients. We’ve received wonderful feedback from parents and the medical team on how necessary and beneficial this service is to the patients, particularly during early development. In my previous post, I mentioned that most of my patients have multiple and/or severe developmental delays and I tend to skew my perspective of early development and create new baselines based on my patients’ presentations. I really appreciated the emphasis Beth placed on the importance of being a music therapist being a unique source of knowledge and competency for our patients, families and treatment team. I often look to my fellow rehab therapists for their expertise to inform my practice and I hope to offer them the same.

[Jessica Triana]

The salient learning point for me this week was to remember what “normal” or “typical” development looks like. I have charts similar to the given cheat sheet hanging up in my office as a reminder. However, I have a tendency to skew my perspective of development based on what I’m seeing in my current population. As most of my patients are born prematurely, have multiple developmental delays or are globally delayed, I sometimes need a refresher on typical development. I greatly appreciated the new cheat-sheet and warning signs and plan to create more continued awareness around these aspects of development when working with my patients.

[Jessica Triana]

Hello everyone! My name is Jessica Triana and I currently live and work in the Boston area. I graduated with my masters in mental health counseling and music therapy from Lesley University last May. Throughout undergrad and graduate school I was fortunate to work with various early-childhood and school age populations in the states and abroad through practicums and internships. I found the most joy in pediatrics, which is where I am now. At Franciscan Children’s, more than half of my caseload is infants and toddlers requiring intensive inpatient rehab. Although often challenging, I really enjoy working with the family unit and I hope to start an outpatient group focused on early development. I am looking forward to any information and resources that will expand and deepen my understanding of music therapy and child development. In particular, I hope to learn more about this work within family systems.

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