Music & Autism

 For years, there have been discussions about how serious music can enhance intelligence.  (I use the term "serious" as the term "classical" actually only refers to a certain period in music history.) Through my years of teaching, I have witnessed how students moods can change due to the mode in which the music is written. I have witnessed students heartbeats slowing or accelerating to match the tempo of the piece of music they are performing. I have witnessed students who are to shy to speak up in a conversation, find a voice through music. Being a music teacher, I am ALWAYS looking around the web for information about how music can enhance your life. I recently discovered a series of 10 short videos from the 2009 International Science Festival. They exhibit a panel of scientists, including neurologists,......and Bobby McFarrin. For those of you who do not know, beyond his "Don't Worry Be Happy" hit, he is also a trained musician, composer and conductor. The videos are AMAZING in how you use your brain while listening to and performing music!!! One of the shorts showed that when you participate in musical activity, you actually use many different parts of your brain at the same time....even parts of your brain that you do not normally use! If you are interested, you can access the videos from the link to the right.

This reminded me of when I was in high school. Before I became the mother of Aspie sons...I would spend my summers volunteering at a summer camp for kids with developmental problems...teaching music. Guess which kids I was drawn to the most?
You guessed it, Autistic kids!!
God really does prepare you for the tasks He asks of you!!
Well, there was one non-verbal autistic boy that pulled at my heartstrings. His caretaker, who accompanied him to the camp, told me to not worry about him. "He won't sing and he won't hear you. He will just rock. Just leave him be." Of course, this rubbed me the wrong way! I placed the picture book for the songs we were going to sing in front of him. I never saw him turn the pages...but every time I looked over at him, the book's pages were turned to the song that we were singing! And believe me...his caretaker never got up so I know she didn't turn the pages. HOW AWESOME.

So now I have Aspie sons.....a music teacher with Aspie sons...what can this information show me?
I first started thinking about how my sons were listening to serious music in utero. Maybe those of us who had our children listen to serious music early on simply awakened parts of their brains that other kids do not use. Maybe some Autistic kids NEED serious music in their lives...to make sense of the very confusing world. I KNOW that music has greatly affected my sons! For instance,
my oldest son had extreme colic as an infant. I would play the CD's I had played for him before he was born and he would immediately settle down. My middle son listens to minimalistic music (contemporary music that is very patterned) and he says it straightens out his brain so that he can think better.

So maybe...just maybe...as I have always suspected....our Aspie kids do not have a developmental delay...they simply THINK DIFFERENTLY. They are able to use those parts of their brains that "normal" people can't. We are just to dumb to understand this possibility...