We have officially raised enough funds to purchase a fogger for the studio! in case you didn’t know, this amazing device sanitizes air, fabrics and surfaces and is more effective (and safer!) than bleach. Sounds too good to be true right? It was, until now! These handy devices are used in hospitals and dentist offices for infection control. A HUGE thank you to everyone who participated so that we could afford one of these beuaties!
Big News at the Studio
WE’VE MOVED.
November first we moved from our single Studio to a larger two studio space! This means we will have another music therapist on site and a music therapy intern starting next week.
My vision for the studio is that it becomes a music therapy collective and the community resource I always dreamed of being a part of. Having a collective rather than a number of music therapists under one business means that everyone is equally as invested in collaborating and taking good care of our clients. We strive to create a welcoming environment for kids and parents.
so on that note, see you at the studio!
NMT
If you’re already a client, you will know that I recently went to Portland to earn my NMT affiliation. I almost didn’t make it there.
11 pm Saturday night, as I am packing my things for Portland the next day, I grab my passport out of its drawer and take a casual flip through. This is when I realize it’s 6 months expired. *Cue Panic.
It turns out that there IS a process for getting an emergency passport IF you meet the criteria and jump through a multitude of bureaucratic hoops. Sunday morning I went flying to Burnaby to get a passport photo, and they had no one there to take it. Apparently people don’t get passport photos on the weekend? Luckily their other location had someone. I made it to my first contract, cancelled my afternoon clients, went flying down to Surrey Central to meet the emergency staff at the passport office, and drove across the border at 2 pm with the ink still drying on my newly printed passport. Whew!
AND after a full week in Portland I have even more tricks up my musical sleeve!
It's 2019!
Its a new year which means;
a) Its tax time again
b) Everybody gets their goals and objectives updated!
If you are paying out of pocket for your child’s music therapy services, keep your invoices, there are tax credits available!
2018 saw Creative Connections Music Therapy moving into its own studio space and the client list is ALMOST FULL. If you are looking to put your child into music therapy, contact me for availability or to put your child on the wait list.
I can’t wait to see what 2019 has in store!
We've Moved
I'm so excited to share with you that Creative Connections has moved. If you've been with me a long time, you'll remember that I used to sublease space in a music studio. This year, I have secured my own small business space in beautiful Upper Lonsdale. This is exciting as it features a few things we were lacking previously, such as;
a)Ample street parking
b)Immediate access to the upper levels highway
c)It's close to all the amenities Lonsdale has to offer so you can run errands or grab a coffee while your child is having therapy.
What's not to love? See you there!
Navigating Autism Funding in BC
Getting a child a diagnosis is overwhelming enough without adding in all the paperwork necessary for getting a child's behavior intervention team in place. However, paperwork is part of the process and, while I am always happy to walk my parents through the process, I've just found this handy PDF here: https://www.actcommunity.ca/files/pdf/resources/IPS-MCFD-AFUDec2009-print.pdf that walks you though the process (with visuals!) I have also included this in the useful links area of my web page for your convenience. This is quite the journey your family is embarking on, but I promise watching your child live up to their potential is worth it. Good luck!
No Photos Please
Recently there has been much debate in the music therapy community as to whether it is ethical to post photos of clients on social media and web pages. But how do you convey exactly what music therapy is without seeing it in action? For me, that's where the illustrations on the website come in, because stock photos are OK, but I simply cant bring myself to post photos (even with non-identifying features) of vulnerable children, it just doesn't sit right. When I was an intern I came across a wonderful video on youtube of a music therapist working with a nonverbal child. Scroll down to the comments and there it was. A stranger fishing for information about this child, such as their name and age. When you post something online you have no control over who views it, so while I can choose what images information and videos I post online, my clients do not. So while parents are welcome to take photos or videos to show their behavior consultant or families what their kids are working on, you wont ever see me posting content of anyone other than me.
March is Music therapy awareneness month
Wait... it's March already?
Yep! So head on over to the my twitter feed(link at the bottom of this page) for some #musictherapyawareness month info and video clips of many of the songs I have been writing this year. If you're still not sure what on earth music therapy is, I guarantee you'll have a better idea after poking around a bit.
Why I love writing Songs
Is it just me, or is there a pretty limited repertoire for kids? I mean even though I NEVER want to sing Old MacDonald again, it does have its place in that making animal sounds is a fabulous way to target articulation and speech sounds. But what can I do with songs like "Mommy finger" and "frere Jaques"? How can I meet my kids clinical goals with these songs, and furthermore, what happens one my kids get a little older? Some 9 and 10 year old kids with delays don't mind songs that are not quite "age appropriate" but how do I keep engaged the ones that do? Well, I write a song of course.
When I write a song I pick a goal or area I'd like to address, choose a key and away I go. This allows me not only to target a client or groups specific needs, but also allows me to make it structured and repetitive as I need to be....and since it's my song, I can change it as my clients' needs change or to make to work for another group. AND if you make it catchy, then all ages like it. (I totally caught my husband singing my parachute song "popcorn" last time he was making us popcorn!).
In case you didn't know, I post excerpts of many of my new songs on twitter, so head on over to @jmllovesmusic to check it out!
My new favorite instrument
Is a piano mat. I bought it last year because I thought, well how cool is an 8 foot piano. And then it sat and sat in my closet for months. So on an impulse I pulled it out with one of my kiddos last week and I discovered SO many therapeutic ways to use it. Here are a few examples:
Rolling across the piano is a very engaging way to provide proprioceptive input and encourage joint attention.
Pulling a child down the piano by the ankles encourages eye contact and can be used to increase language by having the child make a request for you to pull them down the piano.
i.e.
For a verbal approximation the therapist could say ready, set , and child could say "g" or "go".
Child can make a request by saying "again" or "pull me"
For kids working on full sentences " I want more pulling please" or "do it again Jorden"!
For kids working on social imitation you can play follow the leader across the piano (I like to sing the chosen actions to the tune of hi ho the derry oh. Jordens turn to jump, Jordens turn to Jump, hi ho the derry oh, Jorden's turn to Jump! The repetition also allows you to cue the client to fill the the last blank:Jordens turn to --------. Therapist waits for child to say "jump!" before jumping. Other actions you can do across the piano are:
Crawl, march, skip, crab walk, somersault slide on your belly (with or without a running start) and walk skipping every second or third key.
Hope that helps get the creative juices rolling as we had into a new school year. Happy music making!
The Most Important Thing I have Ever Learned.
As we close in on June (wait...what?!) things in my MT groups have me thinking a lot about what elements make for a successful group and how I can be better at helping kids be successful, and so I have really been upping the ante with new songs. Not just simple social skills songs but moving into multi-step instructions and multiple actions and getting both sides of the body going at the same time. Tough stuff. And the first couple weeks of this led to a bit of confusion and a lot of instruction and what may have looked to an observer like a lack of structure. BUT the most important thing that my internship supervisor taught me is that just because an intervention activity doesn't appear successful, doesn't mean it cant be. Because now a few weeks in my kids are even more engaged, and most of them are on their way to mastering the new activities I've brought.
Working with kids, and I mean any kids is a delicate balance of challenging them and putting them into what drum circle facilitator Arthur Hull refers to as "student crisis mode." So while it's still important to have simple, engaging and success oriented activities making up the bulk of things, it's important not to do the kids a disservice by underestimating them or assuming that they "can't" do something because they learn differently.
What's Going down at the Studio?
Since September we've been focused on making the studio a more welcoming environment. Paint, elbow grease and new shelving units! We want the studio not only to be a great space for the clients who are using it, but also for the parents and siblings who are waiting during the session. Our central Lonsdale location has a space has something to offer for everyone. We have a nook with a table at the front of the studio that's always stocked with coloring books, crayons and a few toys and books and is a great spot to get some homework done. We are right across the street from the public library in case you need a bit more space to play or study and we are located near all of central Lonsdales' shops and amenities should parents wish to fit in a quick run to the grocery store, or grab a coffee and a few moments of peace at Echo Cafe right next door to us. Now, if only we could get some proper spring weather right?
Thinking outside the box: Adapting Piano Lessons
Today I stumbled across this article about teaching piano with autism and how rare and challenging it can be and how it can be adapted. Sometimes I take it for granted that I had to learn how to engage with kids who learn a bit outside the box, and that not all music teachers may feel equipped to take on the challenge of these extra needs. The beautiful thing about music therapy is that this is what a music therapist goes to school for, and so today I'd like to share a personal story.
When I was in University I was working as a Behavior Interventionist, and one of my families acquired a second hand piano. This instrument intrigued my client and the parents, being aware of my training, noticed the interest and asked if I could nurture it in a more structured manner.
The first few times we sat at the piano I noticed straight away how my client was going up and down the keyboard noticing the relationships to the notes and was fascinated when I played basic songs. However,. this client had significantly delayed language and was not able to process long winded verbal instructions or directions and quickly became frustrated.
So...how do you explain to someone that cant process so much verbal information that the notes on the piano are related to those tiny black squiggles on the page?
You break it down of course.
Since this child had strong social imitation skills, liked repetition, and has been taught play skills via video modelling successfully in the past, I used an ipad to film my hands on the keys playing the wheels on the bus with a very simple chord accompaniment in the left hand. I showed it to my client who immediately grabbed it out of my hands and began to watch it over and over.
I was not surprised at all when a week later as I was checking my morning emails. There was an email from Dad with a video link, and darned if the kid hadn't memorized the entire piece and was playing it completely independently, just from watching my hands. The power of thinking just a little outside the box.
Celebrate Every Step
In University I had a practicum supervisor who said "sometimes the sign of a good session is when they are not sticking their tongue out at you." I have never found anything in my clinical practice to be so true. Sometimes an amazing session means a today a child cried for only half the session, or only got up from their chair three times instead of five, or needed two breaks instead of three. To me, these small steps are really huge! While its true sometimes the steps seem tiny, every step forward is an achievement, and positively reinforcing these steps is what motivates a child to keep making them. Rapport also plays an important part and students sometimes can't or don't tell you how much they enjoy themselves. The beautiful thing about music is that it can be a positive reinforcement all by itself.
When I was an intern I had a student who had some pretty large behavioral issues and would remain at the back of the group for the duration largely without actively participating. One day as I was announced it was time to sing my goodbye song, the student burst out "allllllllllllready?!" and that's how I knew it had been a good session. I also learned something very important that day. What looked to me like a non-participatory child was actually a child who was staying calm and actively paying attention for an entire half hour. Once you realize that this likely does not happen in any other aspect of a child's (or their EA's) day, it becomes a pretty big deal.
So, the moral of the story is; its all about your perspective.
And I like to believe that when you genuinely take joy in a child's accomplishments, they can really feel it.
Interdisciplinary Intervention
Depending on your child's needs and severity of diagnosis, you may have a lot of professionals involved in your life. OT, Physio, Behavior Consultants, BI's and Respite, just to name a few.
So. Where exactly does music therapy fit into this?
While everybody is coming at your child's intervention from their own educational background and focus, the more we can communicate as a team, the more we can make sure our interventions are complementary to each other. For example, if your Speech Therapist tells me that your child is currently struggling to make an "ooo" sound, then I can incorporate that into a music-based activity that's motivating for your child. A kazoo song is a perfect tool because it won't work unless you say "ooo" into it. Or how about an animal sounds song? Moo moo mooo, a cow says MOO! Your physio is working on gross motor control? Lets do some music and movement! OT says your child is having tactile defensiveness? Great, lets see if we can get them strumming a guitar. Behavior consultant says social imitation needs work? Fabulous, lets break out some copycat and follow the leader type songs.
The more opportunities we have to practice skills, the better we get, and what I love about music therapy is that it makes the practice part naturally fun, motivating and engaging.
I am always happy to liaise with the professionals in your child's life.
Autism Funding. Don't be scared.
Oh Autism funding, so much fun to navigate the paperwork. It's all ready overwhelming to have a new diagnosis, never mind navigating all the paperwork! I've broken it down into three steps. Don't worry, its actually fairly straightforward.
1. Request to pay form:
You need to fill this out for each service provider who works with your child. Music therapists, behavior consultants, behavior interventionists, etc.
2. Funding Renewal:
Request to pay forms need to be re-submitted each year in the month of your child's birthday, which is when their funding renews. They take a while to process things, so the earlier in the month you submit the forms, the less likely your providers will have a delay in their payment.
3. Invoices:
Each service provider fills out an invoice and submits it to the AFU on a monthly or bi-monthly basis. AFU pays the service provider directly. Junior people such as behavior interventionists usually need you to sign off on the invoice prior to submitting. I still have parents sign off so that everything is above board.
Head on over to my useful links page to find a link to AFU forms you may need!