Music Therapy for Children
Learn how and why therapists are using Music Therapy with Children...
Consider all the ways we automatically resort to music when playing with, soothing, or teaching children: singing lullabies when they're babies, the ABCs to teach them the alphabet, and catchy songs such as B-I-N-G-O as they grow - all enjoyable ways to provide them with repetition or catchy melodies that they can easily recall.
Music Therapy Resources
As catchy tunes or melodies stick with us, playing over and over - sometimes to our dismay - so do melodies and rhythms "stick" with children. But unlike most of us who unconsciously pass these ubiquitous songs and techniques down from one generation to the next, those working in the field of music therapy ask why they "stick." The answers help these professionals to understand why music predisposes individuals to learning, as well as provide a host of other therapeutic benefits.
In other words, music therapists understand - and apply - the science behind music's magic.
Music as therapy
Since the founding of the field of music therapy in 1944, researchers and therapists knew that if music facilitated normal learning, it could help children with learning disabilities, in addition to those with social, emotional, physical, and behavioral disorders. (see Anxiety in Children or Depression in Children).
In an article for Pittsburgh Parent Magazine, Music Therapist Allyson Zadnik summarized the benefits of music therapy for special-needs children as follows:
- For nonverbal children, they will make eye contact and initiate a musical improvisation or "conversation" on a drum.
- For children who refuse to attempt fine motor skills, such as holding a pencil or zipping a jacket, they will use their thumbs and forefingers to hold a guitar pick, strumming the day away.
- For children who can't properly interact with others, they will take turns with peers and follow directions within a structured music therapy group that offers movement and musical cues.
Using musical interventions with children, especially those with special needs, centers on transferring the learned fine-motor and communication skills to the classroom and home - empowering these children for the future (see Childhood Developmental Psychology).
Many parents might not realize that music therapy is a special educations service falling under the Individuals with Disabilities Act (IDEA). During the assessment process, if it is determined that the child will benefit from music therapy, and the therapy is considered educationally necessary, the child qualifies for school-sponsored music therapy interventions.
Music therapy for treating illness
In recent years, many hospitals have started utilizing the work of music therapists for sick children. To a child, a sterile hospital setting seems scary and anxiety-provoking. Tests, surgeries, and treatments can leave children unable to relax, stay quiet, or restful.
Studies have shown that a music therapist can calm an anxious child better than any other technique or medicine. Rolling a cart filled with musical instruments to the bedside of sick children, those hooked up to various tubes and hoses, or those too sick to leave their beds, the therapist offers them an opportunity to focus on something all children love - music.
Depending on the child's circumstances, the therapist uses music to "energize or empower the child," or to "calm and relax the child," or to "distract the child" from the pain of chemotherapy, a disability, or surgical procedure.
The therapist might decide to simply play the guitar for the sick child, especially to relax or quiet an overly anxious child. Or if the child is able, sitting up and playing an instrument - even just hooking up and listening to an iPod - distracts the child from the hospital environment.
Many research studies also point to music's physiological effects on sick children. A study done at the University of Rochester Medical Center in New York showed that children receiving bone marrow transplants who also received music therapy began producing white blood cells two days earlier, or faster, than those children who didn't participate in music therapy.
Music therapy for premature infants
The many benefits of music therapy extend even to the youngest of individuals, those born before they're ready.
The Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) at Florida Hospital employs a machine called the Pacifier Activated Lullaby, or PAL system. This system is designed to teach babies how to feed, babies born before they've learned how to suck, swallow, and breath. These feeding mechanisms are learned in the womb at about 24 or 25 weeks.
PAL is hooked to a pacifier, which is attached to speakers and a CD player. As a baby sucks, music plays providing a positive reinforcement. PAL also helps the doctors and nurses by gauging the baby's progress. PAL identifies the pressure of the suck, and also the number of times the baby needs to suck to make the music play, indicating pacing and endurance.
During a Central Florida News 13news story on Florida Hospital and PAL, music therapist Amy Robertson said that babies using PAL are feeding twice as much.
"It's great because the babies leave the hospital about an average of two weeks earlier with the PAL than they would without, and it just helps them feed much quicker," she said.
Where music therapists work
Music therapists focusing on helping children find employment in a wide range of facilities. They work in hospitals on a number of units, including oncology, neonatal intensive care, and surgical. They also work in schools, mental health facilities, and community health organizations.
To work as a music therapist, individuals must complete an approved college music therapy program, and pass the national examination offered by the Certification Board for Music Therapists. Those who successfully pass the exam hold the music therapist-board certified credential (MT-BC).
If you have a desire to work with children, helping them overcome physical, mental, emotional, and learning disorders, or helping them cope with serious illnesses, consider a career in music therapy. For more information, request information from a school offering a music therapy degree.
Science and Music Therapy
A groundbreaking study by researchers from Northwestern University, Chicago, published in Nature Neuroscience showed a strong correlation between music and the brainstem's sensitivity to speech sounds. The brainstem was once thought a lower order brain structure not involved with complex processing (see Brain Structure). But the Northwestern team proved otherwise. They used electrophysiological methods to measure and graph the brainstem 's ability to track pitch levels.
One of the researchers, Nina Kraus, Ph.D, and professor of neurobiology and physiology, said that the findings have important implications because they apply to how individuals encode sounds.
Kraus and her team of researchers state that this study's findings are consistent with previous studies they've conducted, studies that have shown anomalies in the brainstem's sound encoding in children with learning disabilities. These children have subtle changes in brainstem activity when it comes to hearing sounds.
"But those anomalies in sound encoding can be improved by auditory training. What's deficient in those kids is related to what's enhanced with music training."
In other words, playing a musical instrument, for example, significantly enhances the brainstem's sensitivity to speech sounds, and this has wide implications for treating children with language and speech deficits.
"People's hearing systems are fine-tuned by the experiences they've had with sound throughout their lives," Kraus said. "Music training is not only beneficial for processing music stimuli. We've found that years of music training may also improve how sounds are processed for language and emotion."