As a music therapist I have the privilege to work with the adoption and special guardianship community. At the beginning of each piece of work, I spend time with the social worker and the parents or carers to get to know the strengths and the challenges that the child faces. I also want to get to know the child's ‘life story’, a term used to describe the child's life experience in the adoption and special guardianship community.
Over the years, I have learned that the life story told by adults and a child's lived experience of their life story could vary. When the child is ready, I invite them to create a timeline of their life, using musical instruments or other objects to represent significant moments. This helps me to assess the child's ability to be reflective of their experiences from different perspectives. Sometimes we'll pick out moments from the timeline and improvise on it together. Joint improvisation is an important part of my work. Children impacted by early attachment trauma can require additional support to regulate. They learn how to manage strong emotions by watching adults and sometimes by co-regulating with trusted adults. We can do it through music, like offering a predictable beat or responding to the melody played by the child with attunement.
Children who have experienced early trauma might struggle to recognise the embodied experience of emotions, making it difficult for them to express their feelings and regulate themselves. One of the activities I use is called ‘guess my feeling’: the child picks out an emotion card from a deck, and then improvises musically for me to guess their card. Generally speaking, anger sounds loud, fast and lower in pitch, with a pinch of grimmed face; happiness is often also portrayed as a fast feeling, but with higher pitch and more regulated beats. Interestingly, loved has many musical varieties; some children like to use the ‘strings’ setting on the keyboard for it, because it sounds ‘smooth’, while others hum a familiar melody as they give themselves hugs. The latter encourages children to be more aware of their body, and therefore more aware of their feelings. It also offers them a creative outlet for the more difficult emotions that might otherwise present themselves as dysregulated moments.
When working with a child who needs support to embrace their resources, I use a technique called Supportive Music and Imagery (SMI). I invite the child to recall a moment in their week where they feel positive emotions, like feeling brave. I then ask them how that feeling manifests itself in their body. Feeling brave might feel like an openness in their chest and strength in their arms. Together, we search for a piece of pre-composed music that matches their embodied supportive experience. In this instance, we could be looking for a piece in a major key with a strong pulse. Considering children's musical repertoire, it might be more appropriate to explore pop music or songs from musicals instead of classical music. Jess Glynne's ‘Hold My Hand’ could be a good choice. We try out a few pieces before deciding on one. The child and I then draw to the music we chose (on loop), and analyse the drawing together afterwards. As the sessions progress, I find that the children are more able to look out for the positive moments in life. Some of them even have their own supportive music playlist beyond their music therapy sessions.
In my work with the adoption and special guardianship community, I have learned that there is never an objective way of listening to and playing music. Music is fundamentally a human experience, which makes it such a valuable reflective tool when working with those who are not yet ready and not able to process their emotions and life experience verbally.
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