Music Therapy for Motor Skill Development
Music Therapists have the skill and training to address a really wide variety of therapeutic goals. These could include areas such as communication, social-emotional health, or sensory development. Today, I’m sharing how music therapists address fine and gross motor skills and how that might benefit you or your child.
Take a look at the images above. At a brief glance, it’s easy to see how moving is almost always part of making music. Most people move to music naturally and spontaneously. This is one of the reasons why music therapy can be so beneficial for individuals who have gross or fine motor goals. Music also provides us with rhythm which can support and strengthen movements.
Look again at the images above, this time a bit closer. Can you identify which pictures show fine motor skills and which ones show gross motor skills?
Did you say all of them? If so you are correct. Gross motor skills are those that involve the larger muscle groups of a person, primarily the arms, legs, and torso. These skills might involve activities like sitting, standing, walking, jumping, reaching, and throwing. Fine motor skills are those that involve smaller groups of muscles such as those in your wrists and your fingers. These skills involve activities like grasping a fork or a pencil, wiggling your fingers, and turning the pages in a book.
When a person is challenged to perform motor movements that are difficult for them, it can be very frustrating to practice those movements. That’s where music therapy comes in. Music and music activities have a natural tendency to be fun, motivating, and also to distract from pain or frustration that arises.
Part of a music therapist’s training and education involves learning about many instruments and the functionality of that instrument, or rather how you need to be positioned and what motor skills you need in order to play it. This is really important, because we need to know what instrument to choose for our client that is appropriate for the goal they are working on. We also want to choose an instrument that challenges our client, but still the provides them with opportunities for success.
Here are some examples of music therapists addressing fine and gross motor skills.
Max is 8 months old and has some gross motor delays. He is not yet sitting on his own or crawling. Max’s pediatrician refers him to a music therapist because Max’s mom shares that he smiles and laughs whenever he hears music playing on the radio. The music therapist notices immediately that Max is motivated by music. As soon as she plays some chords on the guitar, Max turns his head and eventually rolls his body to be closer to the source of the music. Mom attends the session with Max and provides support for Max to be in a sitting position where he can interact more with the guitar. In each session, the music therapist sits further and further away from Max, giving him the opportunity to independently expand his movement toward the guitar. Mom supports Max by modeling what crawling looks like and crawls next to him. In addition, Max’s mom starts to decrease the amount of support she is providing Max in the sitting position, allowing Max to gradually build trunk strength. Max is very engaged with the guitar and continues to show that he wants to sit to reach and play it. As Max grows stronger, he is able to sit independently and over time, Max learns that a modified crawl gets him to the guitar faster than rolling.
Elaina is a board certified music therapist working on a rehabilitation unit in a large hospital. This month, Elaina has been co-treating with a Physical Therapist for a patient. The patient is 57 year old John, who has a diagnosis of Parkinson’s Disease and is having difficulty with moving and walking. In her sessions, Elaina uses an intervention called Rhythmic Auditory Stimulation (RAS) with John while the PT provides physical support to him as they practice walking. In a previous session, Elaina spent time interviewing John to learn about his music preferences and in today’s session, she is using one of his favorite Rolling Stones Song, “Start Me Up” for the RAS intervention. John uses the beat of the music and the support from his PT and the Music Therapist to strengthen his balance and gait.
In these two very different examples, the music therapist first determined what was motivating for the client and then used that along with an appropriate music therapy intervention to work on the motor goal. Music therapists often consult with physical therapists, occupational therapists and other professionals that their clients are seeing so the client can work on similar goals in several environments and begin to generalize their skills across environments.
Here’s a list of some more ways that music therapists address motor skills with clients
As you can see, individuals young and old with many different abilities and diagnoses may experience motor challenges and music therapy can be a motivating and beneficial way for a person to strengthen these skills.
Contact us if you’d like to get started with music therapy to strengthen you or your child’s motor skills!