Music therapy is a new form of treatment to help in nurturing our child with Autism in Malaysia. It is not music lessons to teach an autistic child to sing, but it uses music to stimulate their learning abilities. Music therapy is able to tackle the deficit areas face by all children with autism. The five main deficit areas are inclusive of communication, socialization/interaction, restricted interest, sensory integration and behavior.
Therefore, the objective of using music therapy as treatment for Autism is to achieve the following goals and improve their skills in the deficit areas:
- Sensory stimulation
- Eye-hand coordination
- Eye tracking
- Awareness of own body
- Voice control
- Gross and fine motor skills
The music therapist uses different type of music instruments to assess the child’s response to music rhythm and sounds. The therapist observes any change in the child’s posture and expressions. For instance, the child may raise up his hands or feet; the child may show a sigh or a smile: the child may move towards the source of the sound or way of it, or have a temper tantrum. Music enables the therapist to establish a trusting relationship with the child which is the most crucial in the treatment process. Once the trusting relationship is established, the therapist begins working to improve the child’s physical and mental functioning through careful structured activities such as singing, listening, playing instruments, composition, moving to music and imagery exercise. Some improvements can be developed after few music therapy sessions :
- Music removes emotional as well as intellectual barriers standing between the autistic child and the environment. The child learns to interact with people through music. He is more actively involved as well s cooperative.
- Music promotes cognitive development of an autistic child. He begins to organize sound in a meaningful pattern. He also learns to control his voice (loud or soft) as well as himself during musical activities.
- The child develops longer concentration span when working with music instrument. They are enthusiastic about the sound and rhythm produced from a music instrument.
- Improves body coordination and better motor control such as hitting drum sticks on a drum or shaking a maraccas to produce different sound.
Please refer to a case study in Music Therapy for the Autistic Child by Juliette Alvin and Auriel Warwick to find out how effective it is in dealing with an autistic child’s learning development. We can’t just depend on one treatment to nurture our autistic child, instead we can combine other treatments such as speech therapy and occupational therapy for more effective results.
