[Susan Gannon]

I am a grandmother of two boys, ages 7 and 8, and I was very active in helping to raise them, especially when they were babies. I used music a lot to calm them, and help them get through transitions. My other experience with children this young, was when I was a Kindermusik educator. I did have one class for babies, but it seemed that the parents didn’t think about music classes for babies this young so it wasn’t very popular. As a clinician, I don’t see babies this young because I think diagnoses come along a little later. I think now that I am more experienced, I will be able to market music groups for this age group. I will use the idea that music helps in normal development, instead of focusing on children with special needs.

[Susan Gannon]

Since I’m joining week 6 a little late, I’ll try to be a little creative in my 5 words: of course, awareness, trust, and then stimulation, touch, bonding.

5 sentences: Sprouting Melodies 1 is a music group just for babies from birth through 9 months old. These groups provide sensory stimulation and bonding between caregiver/parent and baby in a developmentally appropriate way. As your baby grows, she/he will respond by showing awareness of your particular voice (timbre and your typical pitch range). Your baby can choose to respond by looking toward the music or away, explore an instrument or drop it, move to the music with rhythm (maybe not yet synchronized), and show surprise and attention. As your baby grows into the trust stage of development, more responses will be notable such as melody recognition and a little pitch matching.

As a music therapist, this is one age group I have rarely worked with, so I am sticking to the suggested songs in the handouts. 1) As the parents and children enter, I will have some gentle music playing or I will walk around with my guitar. I will have age appropriate instruments set out for the babies to explore. 2) I will then perform a very simple “Hello” song and encourage the parents to sing. 3) For a bonding song I would probably use the “Little Red Wagon” changing it a bit to allow for the element of surprise and a change in dynamics and tempo. 4) I know several songs about me, so this one would be easy to adapt these songs for babies. I really like the “Just Like Me” song demonstrated in the video and plan to use that one. 5) I will probably use my own “egg shaker” song for instrument play songs. I may have to adapt the words to allow for mini maracas. 6) Movement songs – For babies, I like walking the child around the room while singing Skinny-ma-rinky-do (sorry, I don’t remember how to spell it). I really like a song called “Rise, Sugar, Rise” for encouraging the children to do their own movement. 7) Goodbye.

[Susan Gannon]

In response to what some of the others have said about other music programs in their towns, such as the “Music Man” I think how to define what they do is that they are entertainers; we are therapists and educators.

[Susan Gannon]

I work in a clinic for children that is a significant distance from my home (about 45 minutes). The needs of the families I work with are mostly in direct relation to their special needs children. I probably see mostly children on the autism spectrum, a few with Down Syndrome, and other syndromes and disorders. A few have isolated speech delays. They expect me to provide the best therapy possible and want to see improvements in speech and language, cognition, self-regulation, etc. They also want me to spend some time talking to them about parenting and validation along with assurance that their children enjoy what they are doing in music therapy, that it is more than another “work” related therapy. I try to accommodate them as much as I can.

I mostly think in terms of the child, then the family. But I keep hearing the term “community” come up in “Sprouting Melodies” forums so I may want to start thinking about this in different terms. There is a loose-knit community of parents and therapists at this clinic, but I don’t think that the concept of community is stressed here. I may want to use Sprouting Melodies to develop a program closer to my home and try to develop a sense of community there. I have never been one to think about the larger community and how my work could fit into that community. I am looking forward to reading other posts about the needs of community.

[Susan Gannon]

I think Julia hit the nail on the head when she said that music therapists use music as a tool to accomplish non-musical goals. Other music educators follow “scripts” and either supplied, pre-recorded music or music provided by a proprietary entity. These other young childhood educators have used research to see what ‘average’ needs are met by the music they supply. It’s only music therapists who can determine the individual needs of each child, no matter where they are on the developmental time-line, and use music as “tools” to help with development. Even if a parent doesn’t have a special needs child, wouldn’t that parent want the best for their children?

[Susan Gannon]

SINGING: Awareness – Looks to singer. Can make soft cooing sounds with some pitch changes. Trust – Child can match selected pitches and can later respond to elements of surprise. This could be as a glissando or a change in pitch, rhythm, or dynamics. Independence – Child babbles with melodic inflection and can imitate certain pitches. Really enjoys melodic exploration and wants to do it on their own. Control – Child can follow melodic contour of familiar songs. Getting better at recall and reproduction of sounds. Responsibility – Child can now use pulse and meter with melodic contour to reproduce music.

PLAYING INSTRUMENTS: Awareness – This is a time for just listening, but the child will respond differently to sedative versus play-along songs. They may make a basic response and then take time to explore the instrument. They are starting to respond to the instruments as if the music was coming from outside of themselves. Trust – In the trust stage, the child can briefly use pulse and meter to play the instrument. They can slightly turn their wrist and they will play slowly at first. Independence – The child can now explore a wide range of instruments purposefully, but aren’t quite ready to stop when the music stops. Control – This is the stage when they can learn to stop and start if they are given a little extra response time. It’s important to let them stop and start on their own. Responsibility – Children can now maintain a steady beat, they like gathering songs and will play along to them, and they are starting to initiate on their own.

MOVING: Awareness – Rhythmic movements, even without music, are instinctual. However, they will naturally response rhythmically to music. Trust – Children will respond to music with repetitive movements, but this may take a little while to internalize. Clapping is difficult at this stage. Independence – The movements have become more intentional. The child can isolate body parts and has a sense of “I” am moving. Control – We have finally come to the point where the child can imitate learned musical movements. Responsibility – The child uses musical movements in sequence. At this point the child is finally ready for songs such as “Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes”. They can dance with meter and pulse.

LISTENING: Awareness – The child can recognize his/her parents by the difference in timbre. They are able to attend while listening. Trust – They will attend to and recognize a familiar melody. These familiar melodies can provide comfort. Independence – The child can match the intensity of their movements to the intensity of the music. They can also match facial expressions to the music. Control – They can make the choice of stopping their actions to listen to the music. They are using their listening skills to watch and learn. Responsibility – They have a sense of “other” and can listen to the music of others.

[Susan Gannon]

I agree with Rebecca that I will not be as stressed trying to keep children seated. I previously felt that I needed to encourage children to remain seated even if they were not ready to stay seated. I thought that was how they eventually learned to remain seated. Where I work there is a great emphasis on school readiness and this is one area that they concentrate on, being able to remain seated. I now also know that I need to educate others more about how important being developmentally ready is.

I use all four music experiences in my therapy sessions, but probably listening is more incorporated into other experiences. Singing helps develop breath control, prosody, articulation, and self-expression. In fact, I see some children who can articulate better while singing than speaking. Moving encourages self-regulation, both gross and fine motor skills, and again self-expression. Playing instruments can be an individual or group experience. Turn-taking, sharing, playing in rhythm, and learning to initiate and stop are just a few of the many goals these experiences can address. Listening for directions, for changes in dynamics, when to accommodate fill-in-the-blank songs, relaxation, arousal, and calming seem to fit in naturally with the other experiences, although I do occasionally use listening for listening sake.

[Susan Gannon]

I tried the “Hey, Everybody” song with one of my groups and I was so delighted to have a new greeting song. I was start my group with a song the goes “Come and Join the Circle” as they enter the room. Then I sing a “Hello” song that I have written and that song asks “how are you today?” of each child. It’s a great song and I can use it with every age group, but sometimes I want something a little different. This song was great because it flats the 3rd and the 7th which gives it a rocking bluesy feel. It also includes everyone and allows for some motions. I’m definitely going to try to get everyone up so we can dance together next time.

[Susan Gannon]

Many of the children I work with are quite impaired in some way. I see one little 4 year old who I believe isn’t much past the awareness stage. When I first began to see him, he said nothing, vocalized little, would not sit in a chair for more than 2 seconds, and his way of interacting with you was to feel your face and try to scratch you. I have been seeing him for a few months now, and I am beginning to realize that although it may not seem like much, he is actually coming into the trust stage. He can sit in a chair for a few minutes, is trying more vocalizations, laughs when tickled, has a sign for wanting to swing and another for eat, and can even follow a few simple directions such as “touch head”, “clap hands” and “wave”. I like the developmental stages outlined by Raising Harmonies because it focuses on emotional stages that lead to learning and development, rather than how a typical birth to 6 months or 1 year old develops.

[Susan Gannon]

Nicole, thanks for your support with this. I think that I may have been too shy about educating the ABA therapists here. It is difficult here because there are about 40 therapists here, a quarter are ABA therapists, and the rest are OTs and speech therapists. And there is just one of me. That is because music therapy in my state is not reimbursed but all the other therapies are. I think that lack of reimbursement lends itself to less respect for music therapy.

[Susan Gannon]

I have not experienced as much of the phenomenon of children liking pop music as my colleagues have pointed out. I have noticed that most of the children in my groups and individual sessions know children’s songs such as the Wheels on the Bus. They also know some nursery rhyme songs, but probably not as many as I did as a child. They really like songs from Disney movies such as “Frozen”, “Spirit”, and “Rapunzel” just to name a few. The clinic where I work is in an area where there are a lot of immigrants from India. I have asked families to bring me CDs of their cultural music, but I find the children prefer to listen to CDs or my voice singing children’s songs. It’s almost as if they are using these songs to learn English and fit into the surrounding culture. Therefore, I use a lot of my own composed songs because most of the children’s songs are over-learned songs, and that makes it difficult to use them as training and therapy songs if piggybacked.

[Susan Gannon]

I would like to reply to the statement that Nicole made about the parent and ABA therapist concerning the 6y.o. on the spectrum. I, too, often feel misunderstood by the ABA therapists even though I do my best to support them. It is not the BCBAs that are the problem, but the people who are hired as “direct line therapists”. They are often very young, only starting their education as ABA therapists, and are taught to be very rigid in their behavior with the young clients because they do not have enough experience to make their own decisions as to how to handle children’s behavior. It is exciting to me to know that I will be learning tools in which to express myself to explain my actions as a music therapist.
I have some ideas on starting my own combined music therapy and ABA clinic and hope to be able to use the Sprouting Melodies program to facilitate this and also transition away from working for others and working for myself.

[Susan Gannon]

I have been working with young children with developmental disabilities for years so I have much of the covered information. However, I liked the way it was presented in such a concise and organized manner. My most valuable takeaway from this week was that I can help parents understand what is typical and what is just part of the range of development that many children experience. I don’t generally see parents alongside the children, and that is something I would like to change as I develop my own practice, and move away from the clinic where I am working now.
You also asked what I would bring to the table in working with these young children in a music group run by a music therapist. I guess my therapy experience, my life experience (I am a grandmother), and my creativity. I love evaluating the children, and writing my own songs based on their needs.

[Susan Gannon]

Hi, my name is Susan Gannon and I live in the Ann Arbor area of Michigan. This is about a 3rd career for me as I was over 50 yrs old when I started, but this is the career I most love and am sticking to. I received my bachelor’s from Eastern Michigan University and my master’s from Colorado State through their distance learning program. I have worked for the last 8 years at a wonderful children’s clinic. This clinic has a strong ABA component but unfortunately does not appreciate my music therapy. I am told that it is because everything else at the clinic is reimbursed by insurance companies, but not music therapy in Michigan. I am doing the Sprouting Melodies training because I am thinking of starting my own business and offering a children’s music program. I was a Kindermusik educator for many years but I was always troubled by the scripts and proprietary nature of the program. We had to sell expensive music materials for the children, much of which I didn’t feel was very useful. I am also struck by how things seem to be falling together for me. I am receiving some advice and opportunities for starting my own business, and just yesterday I came upon this class for Sprouting Melodies. I was so happy to be able to join it even though you are well into your second week.

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