I have written on “The Importance of Giving Processing It’s Own Time” https://backmountainmusictherapy.com/2012/09/the-importance-of-giving-processing-its-own-time/ , but this week one particular example displayed a reason I had not yet considered. I have 2 severely autistic clients that are brothers. The younger “Eddie” appears to have slightly more difficulty with sensory issues. When he gets frustrated, it is… Read more »

I had waited on this blog, unsure what to write. I had had a huge success this week. Last year, when I wrote “Don’t give Up On Speech!” (https://backmountainmusictherapy.com/2011/10/dont-give-up-on-speech/), although all the non-verbal children I had worked with had progressed from no speech to beginnings of speech, to labeling and even complete sentences, I had… Read more »

This week I read two articles that made an impact on me. One was about “Deep Listening,” and the other was “Autism and the Expected-Unexpected Social Thinking Vocabulary” (http://www.autismsupportnetwork.com/news/autism-and-expected-unexpected-social-thinking-vocabulary-2782942). Earlier this week, I also had a conversation with my son, a high school senior who is taking an AP Psychology coarse. He was telling me… Read more »

I have often heard teachers or therapists’s ask the question, “what motivates her?” or “I can’t find anything that motivates him.” Well stop looking, it is found. It is usually being demonstrated when the child is left to his own devices. The answer is 1) watch, 2) listen, 3) mirror, and 4) watch again.Watch and… Read more »

This week, as my own kids have headed back to school, I thought it might be the appropriate time to talk a little about those “aimlessly wandering” times in Therapy. The time when it seems like you, as the therapist, and the client are a standstill.As I had mentioned before, I do believe those times… Read more »

This week I thought I would keep the writings short and give a little visual commentary. I think when it comes to the communicative abilities of music, as Victor Wooten said, “In some instances, music works better than the spoken word because it doesn’t need to be understood to be effective.” This last week I… Read more »

Last week, I wrote about listening in order to figure out the information that either we have not been given concerning the children we work with or finding the clues that we need to progress (https://backmountainmusictherapy.com/2012/08/what-to-do-with-missing-pieces/). Someone asked me if I thought that was a skill one could develop, or if it came from years… Read more »

This week, some of my work was cancelled so that I could work at a week-long camp I agreed to work at one year ago. The children at this camp were not children I knew much about personally, and did not have an opportunity to get to know individually. After writing last weeks blog about… Read more »

Earlier this week, I had read an article by another Music Therapist, Kimberly Sena Moore, on being stuck in a rut in therapy ( http://www.musictherapymaven.com/stuck-in-a-rut-11-ways-to-get-your-music-therapy-mojo-back/ ). Her timing was perfect with this article. This had not been a glorious therapy week. I had also read several articles on sensory integration therapies being valid practice or not. In combination with the ongoing Olympics,… Read more »

Today, in two seperate sessions, three examples of my blogs happened all at once, using “stims” in learning (https://backmountainmusictherapy.com/2012/03/autistic-children-watching-for-developmental-learning-cues/): Frankie finding his voice (https://backmountainmusictherapy.com/2012/06/frankie-finds-his-voice-where-words-fail-music-speaks/), using a different rule book (https://backmountainmusictherapy.com/2012/04/the-yellow-brick-road-of-development-different-route-different-rules/), and recognizing significant development (https://backmountainmusictherapy.com/2012/04/recognizing-development-and-its-significance-in-each-individual/). It did not come in a beautifully wrapped package, but it was very significant.Today I had a session with “Frankie”…. Read more »