pathetic question about music therapy

[Fio2]

brace yourselves

I know my dd gets this at school and apparently is doing really well. She is very lucky in that only 5 children per class get the oppurtunity to partake in the therapy.

But thats about all i know about it. I have had a letter off the therapist today saying i can go and see him if I like to discuss the therapy but feel a bit of a prat making one as I am completely clueless.

So question is....does anyone know anymore than me? and should I meet him?

obviously it isnt my day for the braincell

What do you want to know? Dd had a block of 8 sessions a couple of years ago.

what happens?
what do they expect to get out of it?

for example on the letter about dd it says

"The aim of X's Music Therapy which has been highlighted as a way of showing that progress has been made. Music Therapy is much more than this one aim"

I just dont understand what that means at all

blossomhill, help!

Oh Fio,music therapy is absolutely fantastic!
I work with them an awful lot and it is especially good at reaching autistic children I find.
There should be an official site,or there should be a leaflet they can give you.

Very misunderstood field. A lot of people think it is for kids who are 'good' at music.
In a nutshell,a therapist uses music,singing,rhythm and so on to 'reach' and interact with a child.
No set way of doing this. I have seen my colleague for example dealing with a very withdrawn autistic child who was just grunting and tapping by echoing back his noises on the piano.So,he went 'tap tap tap' and she went 'plink plink plink' and so on.

For more able children we often combine our targets,so games where we move when the music plays and stop when it stops,take turns palying something and so on.

Ask her for some info beforehand,then when you meet her ask her what her goals are.

You're fortunate to be granted an audience btw.They are very rare!

Sorry,it's a bloke.Rarer still.
(Sentence doesn't make sense to me-some mistake surely!?)

Just having a look at dd's report (in my filing cabinet especially for dd's reports !!!!) and it says they used the music therapy to observe dd's behaviour and ways of relating and interacting with others.

Dd went into the sessions without me and they were at CAMHS. I waited outside. At the end we had a meeting to discuss her findings about dd. I think it is just a way to find out more about the child, same sort of thing as art therapy I guess in that even though a child may not be able to communicate effectively say verbally they can tell so much by the way they respond to music.
I would definitely go in as I found it so interesting and when I watched clips of dd that they had videoed I was in tears.

HTH

HTH

this is really weird.

this morning when dd had her asessment the social worker-nurse said that dd responds by playing with musical toys better than she does with other toys because she,s not interested in them.

might something to look into for my dd, thanks fio u have just given me an idea

thanks girls, this has really helped

mizmiz, i am glad that sentance confused you aswell-makes me feel less dim

My Ds2 has music therapy which I attend with him. It has been really great. In our case there is a basic structure to the session involving a hello song at the start and a goodbye song at the end. There is a whole range of instruments and she encourages him to join in and "be playful" (her words). A lot of the aim in our case is to get him to dare to try new things and interact without caution. He has co-ordination problems and unclear speech and we have also worked on helping him to blow instruments to strengthen his mouth muscles and it helps a lot with his motor planning and organisational skills.

I don't think you would be expected to know all about it and it is different for each child so I would go to the appointment and ask him to tell you what he does and what he feels your dd gets out of it.

Fio,just reading that sentence again and have no wine tonight so fairly compo mentis!
I think he's made a typo. Probably 'as' should read as 'is'
Think he means he has highlighted the partic. area in which she has developed in particular but is also stressing that the therapy has many other aims.

Still not great English but hey,as long as he is a better m/therapist than grammarian right?!

I would quite enjoy showing it to him,asking what it means and seeing his brow furrow.

ds1 got music therapy last term fio. I think he may be having it this term as well- will check when we have our home visit. Or would have if he had agreed to go in the room!

The aim was to do intensive interaction, which I think kind of mirrors what the child is doing. But the therapist found it didn't really do anything with him because he showed no interest/wouldn;t go in the room, so the last I heard they were going to try and make it more structurted.

I think intensive interaction is quite a common method used my music therapists- I googled it and came up with quite a bit.

I think one of the things they do is to copy whatever the child does - so if the child goes 'bang bang bang' on the drum, the therapist goes 'bang bang bang' on her instrument, thereby establishing a channel of communication. There's also some level of improvisation and experimentation I think - but that's all I know I'm afraid!

Veering of subject slightly....
Jimjams,article on II in Sunday Telegraph last week.(Would do a link but I read it on paper. Have heard bloke who is driving force (Dave Hewitt) speak and it was pioneered by my (late) colleague.

Many thoughts about it ,but what interested me is that they now have Phoebe Caldwell on board.Do you know of her? She came to do some work with us about 10 years ago.Quite mad but great! She basically came,assessed people and then built them appropriate equipment in her mobile workshop!

Posh maverick in corduroy plus fours! Brilliant!