How do you know wen expressive language (speech) is too far off of a goal? I do not believe that when after a child can point, that is when they are motivated to speak. None of the young people I have worked with have ever reacted by gesturing, pointing, or signing first when at the… Read more »

Back to my mantra: watch the child. Let the child direct and the therapist/parent/teacher support. Even if they child is not giving sound, one can support movement or even breathing with sound. Repeated sound, as I had spoken about in the previous blog (https://backmountainmusictherapy.com/2012/12/where-to-start-control-of-oral-movements/), sometimes gives structure to a child’s irrelevant, chaotic, seemingly impulsive behavior…. Read more »

How does one go about exercising getting a child to exercise those oral muscles? Like everything else, start where the child is. The first response one may say is,”Where he is? He doesn’t do anything. He doesn’t even look at me.” As mentioned in the last blog https://backmountainmusictherapy.com/2012/11/5-part-series-music-and-speech/), precursors to speech are attentiveness, eye contact,… Read more »

Why does music make speech so accessible? Why are there so many stories about nonverbal clients (aphasic, apraxic, stroke victims, autistic, etc.) singing when they can’t speak a word? Why is Music Therapy so valuable to those who have difficulty with spoken language? Why is Music Therapy such a value to the autistic community? Although… Read more »

Functional skill level is ready to begin after, after, after the client has achieved some organization and self-regulation ability. If we haven’t learned yet that trying to stop that “stimming” isn’t going too far, we better go back to the beginning. We have to do something about the need for the “stimming” first. My last… Read more »

I have written about self-regulation several times and have given a couple of visual examples on video. This week in my series on Music Therapy I hope to connect some of the dots. I have often talked in my newsletters about the humanistic approach in which I believe wholeheartedly. Although Music Therapy is “evidence-based”, I… Read more »

The last two weeks I have talked about music therapy and attentiveness to our clients. Today I want to expand and talk about the results of these combined subjects, mainly the organization they help our clients to develop. As we promote music therapy as a nonthreatening medium, we often talk about how the qualities of… Read more »

The picture at the beginning of this newsletter is one of my grandfather and myself as a child. This is one of my favorite pictures because it captures the quality my grandfather had that is missing in society at large today. My grandparents lived across the street from me on a farm. I voluntarily spent… Read more »

                                                                        PART 1: MUSIC THERAPY This week’s blog is the first part of a 5 part series, Music Therapy from… Read more »

This week, I continued my thoughts from last week; to Support What is Given and Give Structure. Previously, I had trouble with my client “Frank”, staying engaged and wanting to leave the room. In my anxiety about this, I continually kept presenting new material to “Frank.” Last week’s blog (https://backmountainmusictherapy.com/2012/09/support-what-is-given/) presented a video clip of… Read more »