Music Therapy

Music is a really important part of our family life.  We all play one or two instruments, we all listen to a lot of music, and our social life largely revolves around playing and sharing music with friends.  Music of all sorts - we're not fussy, so long as it has a tune (and sometimes when it hasn't).  So my kids have grown up hearing Bach one minute and Blur the next. Before they could walk, they were playing on the floor while we played music over them.  As soon as they could make out some sort of tune on anything at all, they were playing with us. By the age of 12, Julie could play music in the folk group as an equal with the adults - in fact, often as a key member of the band.

So it is probably music that we miss the  most when Julie is very ill.  Music takes a lot of time, and so does a sick child - you can't manage both.  Joe had to give up his saxophone class because it was so far away that it took up a whole evening that we just couldn't spare; I had to give up choir.  When very depressed, Julie no longer wants to hear music, which she cannot enjoy.  She often can't cope with actually making music either - the concentration is beyond her, and she finds the noise levels difficult to cope with.  Performance is way too stressful, so all those requests for us to help out by going on stage for this, that and the other - carols at Christmas, raising money for the church roof, backing accompaniment at the village panto - we have been turning these down for a couple of years now.  I can't go to rehearsals without her, and if she tags along I have to leave early if she can't cope.  Before I gave up trying to carry on performing as normal, I was fast becoming the worst sort of musician to play with - the unreliable sort who don't turn up or drop out at the last minute.  Of course sometimes it's a relief to pass on some of these requests, but by turning them down I'm no longer part of the village in the way that I was.

Last year, while Julie was in hospital, she was assessed as having communication difficulties.  We have autism in the family - her brother has a diagnosis - so we were not much surprised to learn that she has significant problems with verbal communication. But it was recognised at the time that music was an important way that she could communicate.  For once those big multi-agency CPA meetings paid off - it turned out that there was a music therapist visiting the school regularly, and as soon as the school staff heard about Julie's assessment, they put her name on the waiting list.  As a result, for most of the last year Julie has had individual music therapy every week, thanks to the school, even though it is not provided by the hospital.

Well, perhaps not every week - there have been months of chaos when Julie was in and out of hospital - but every week that she could manage.  Most weeks it has been the only time that she has actually gone into the school building.  I don't know how much therapy really goes on in these sessions, but I suspect quite a lot of music does. In fact, I secretly suspect that the music therapist likes to have Julie come along to play, after hours of kids bashing away, taking out their anger and stress on the drums!  Now she has Julie writing music again, and learning chord theory, and trying out as many instruments as they can lay their hands on.  It's obviously a source of great pleasure to both of them, and I am just so pleased to see Julie starting to enjoy music again.  Her formal music education - she had been working her way up the grade exams system, and had originally meant to take a GCSE in music - has all been abandoned, so this is a lovely and much more relaxed way of taking it up again. 

We have been playing music with friends again too, usually in the late afternoons when Julie is less tired, often in small groups in people's homes rather than in the noise of the village social club.  Starting with just one or two tunes, she has slowly been able to build up to playing for an hour.  How patient all our friends have been, encouraging and supporting her, never giving up on her when she disappeared back into the hospital for weeks at a time.

Last night was another first because we went to a concert of classical music, something we haven't managed in quite a while.  Classical music concerts take a lot of concentration, even for those of us who love the music!  I'd be willing to bet that at least half the audience in any given concert is drifting off and thinking about the gas bill or their petunias.  So for Julie it is a huge challenge to sit through a full program - including an hour of Brahms' Requiem.  "I found my concentration wandering a bit at the end." she admitted.  "That's OK, mine wandered off in the first ten minutes." I said, with a sigh.  It was also a late night by her standards, and she was able to cope with staying out until after ten for the first time in months.  This opens up all sorts of possibilities for the future....