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Keymaster
What a wealth of creative and interesting ideas! I had the honor this past year (well that word might be make it sound more pleasant than it was 🙂 to write at length about music therapy in early intervention around the world. One thing that struck me was the widely held view in other countries that music therapy in early childhood was not fully about the child, and not fully about the grownup, but about the relationship between the child and the grownup. Our real client is that relationship that needs to be strong in order for the child to have healthy development. Dr. Amelia Oldfield from the United Kingdom has written extensively about this and some of you might want to read her work.
Many of the mothers I work with have signs or symptoms of depression. The action oriented nature of music making sometimes provides these moms with an opportunity to ‘peer out’ of their inner window for just a few moments. I remember one mother who always came to group with her baseball cap pulled low over her eyes. She could hardly move, but somehow made the effort to make it to group each week. It was during the “Wiggly Jiggly Car” song that her little one began to tip over from side to side and mom almost fell over with him. The child laughed with glee and for just a moment, Mom and child made eye contact laying there on the floor and Mom smiled a genuine smile.KeymasterThrough this training and Raising Harmony, we are committed to creating a widespread but connected community of music therapists who are passionate about young children and families. All of us will be here to support you as you reach out to your own communities. Yes, there is strength in numbers!
KeymasterThanks, Cindy. Watch your e-mail for a Valentine’s gift coming everyone’s way in the next day or so. 😉
KeymasterOh, Angie! This is a story I will remember…and probably repeat. My most memorable “Wiggly Jiggly” story was from a group I had with mostly Dads. One dad was a New York City Policeman, and he really loved “Wiggly Jiggly” and thought He could use it to teach drivers and passengers to keep their seat belts on! Sweet.
KeymasterI love the term “play-like”! Although instruments add a lot to sessions, it is possible to create wonderful, complex and fulfilling music with just ourselves. (Have you seen any of the video by Bobby McFerran?). When I present to parents or early childhood professionals, I sometimes deliberately plan to have no instruments so they can see how they can make music with only their voices and body percussion.
KeymasterThanks for your honesty, Robin. I too, practiced for years with my instincts guiding me. As I began to train more interns, though, I found that I needed to be better organized and clear in what made my instincts well…instinctual. I also knew that the students were exposed to the newest research, and so I had to keep up with that also. That’s how the whole developmental level framework came about. So it is just a way to organize and scaffold all the things we already knew from our clinical practice!
KeymasterIt is wonderful how much each of you have to share! Thank you for being so insightful. I have been thinking alot lately about how important singing is for children. When they really begin to ‘own’ the music through their singing. This is something I always have to be super aware of since as I trained singer I can easily overwhelm the vocalizations of the children. I try and pull back a little bit vocally each time I sing a song. It amazes me how the children then fill in the musical space.
KeymasterThank you for working so hard on this exercise, everyone. One of the issues I find with music therapy is that we don’t always have clear correlations on specific musical responses and how they relate to other areas of life. Most of us are comfortable with giving parents information on when a child begins to walk or talk. My hope is that through exercises like this we can be just as confident showing parents where children are developmentally through watching and listening to them make music.
KeymasterThose worksheets might be helpful to use to plan when you have a number of sessions back to back with children in different developmental levels. Or you can use it to sketch out goals and objectives.
KeymasterSilence is such an important part of music and of the listening experience. In “Music, Therapy, and Early Childhood” there is a more complete discussion on the meaning of silence within music for the young child.
KeymasterOne reason I like to work within the developemental levels is that there is often is not definite diagnosis which we can use as a guide and the levels can give us guidance on goals and treatment plans as well as choosing interventions.
KeymasterI love to hear how the songs are being used or being thought about! Speaking of love, there is a new blog posted on the Raising Harmony website on the connection between love and music in early development called ‘Love Songs 101″. For those of you who have the songbook- check out “Music is the Way” just in time for Valentine’s Day. Enjoy!
KeymasterIt is great to hear that everyone is thinking about music and culture. For those of you who would like to dig more deeply into the connection between music, language and culture I recommend “Music, Language and the Brain” by Ani Patel. It is a very heavy read, but looks from a neurological perspective at how language and music develop along with culturally specific language and musical grammar.
(An aside to Robin…keep an ear out for my niece’s band “The Zinc Kings”. They are an old time band based in Greensboro. She is the fiddler.)KeymasterThank you for using the music and letting me know how the songs work for you and your clients. It is so gratifying to me to know that the music is being spread to the children. In case you didn’t know, most of the songs on the videos are in “You and Me Makes… We: A Growing Together Songbook”. The book has 101 songs with full notation, two CDs and suggestions on how to adapt or use the music. I hope you have been to http://www.RaisingHarmony.com to get five of the songs as a free download.
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