Music in Everyday Life: Assessing, reflecting and experiencing

Dr. Tali Gottfried, Herzog Academic College, Israel

 

In the last three decades, music therapy programs for young children with autism have followed the broader trend recommending that parents and other family members be encouraged to actively participate in the therapeutic process of the child. Still, there is a limited knowledge about how music therapy experiences may influence children's everyday life activities, and in turn contribute to developmental benefits observed because of therapy. A small number of previous music therapy studies, where a family-centered philosophy has been implemented by involving parents within their child's therapy process, have demonstrated parents' ability to use and integrate music therapy activities adopted during sessions into their everyday life.

Songs, musical parent-child games, and music listening are considered a common part of children’s everyday life, and have the potential to provide a space for creativity, expressivity, flow and flourishing . From a broad perspective of health and well-being, music can offer a creative refuge or ‘asylum’ from challenges and pain that people with disability – and their families - cope with. In this way, music addresses our basic human needs for recognition as persons, and to foster identity and relationships. Since music in everyday life can contribute positively to health and wellbeing, the degree to which people use music outside of music therapy sessions could be an important outcome measure for music therapy research and program evaluation.

In this workshop, you will be introduced to the MEL assessment (developed by Dr. Tali Gottfried & Dr. Grace Thompson), which is a self-report assessment for parents. The assessment was designed with the intension to collect information regarding parents’ spontaneous use of music while interacting with their children in the home environment. The MEL assessment offers a tool for music therapy practitioners and researchers to track the use of shared music activities in everyday life, and therefore provides relevant data to show how music is (or is not) being used as a resource for health and wellbeing outside of formal sessions with a music therapist.

This workshop is open for professional music therapists, other professionals who work with young children and their parents and for parents themselves!