Our Music Therapists love supporting the children at a special school in London. During the last school year they provided music therapy to over 100 children! One of them was young Aisha*.

Aisha is 9 years old and doesn’t speak. She has global developmental delay, which means she hasn’t reached the same milestones as other children her age, and she is not able to move very much.

Aisha had been responding really well to classroom music sessions and the music was visibly motivating her, so her teacher suggested that she should have some one-to-one Music Therapy. Aisha had some personal goals to use her hands to explore and to use her facial expressions which the Music Therapist took on board when developing her sessions.

Over the course of four sessions, Aisha has made significant progress. She started by responding to the music with smiles and giggles but didn’t attempt to play the instruments or make sounds in the first session. By the second session, she was reaching out to play and grip the chimes! She played with her Music Therapist for 15 minutes and started to make sounds. Moving to the third session, Aisha moved her whole upper body, shifting from side to side when laughing and purposefully moved her beater towards the xylophone to play it. By the final session, she was responding to sounds made by her Music Therapist and was making different mouth shapes.

Aisha is going to continue to have music therapy at her school and together with her Music Therapist, they will work on using her voice and choice-making.

For more information about our work in schools, visit our website: https://www.chilternmusictherapy.co.uk/where-we.../education

*name and image changed to protect identity

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