Noor’s Love of Music Therapy

Our Creative Arts Therapy Team Leader and Music Therapist, Karla, has been doing music therapy sessions with Noor for the last few months, and Noor has been loving them! Watch the video to hear Noor’s mum Preet talk about just how much fun Noor has been having.

Video Transcript

Karla: So today we’re just gonna – we’re going to hear your thoughts about music therapy, because obviously, Noor has been receiving music therapy in her NDIS – with her NDIS goals and plan at Early Links. And it would be good to hear your thoughts on that. So I came on pretty late in the team, haven’t I?

Preet: Yeah I think it was last year, yeah.

Karla: (Singing) The babies on the bus go –

Noor: Wah!

Karla: Wah wah wah, wah wah wah, wah wah wah

Noor: Wah wah!

Karla: Wah wah wah. The babies on the bus go –

Noor: Wah!

Karla: Wah wah wah. All day long.

Preet: And we always knew that Noor would respond well too because she was always into music. But now how she is I- this is exceptional. I didn’t think she would be this well. And how she loves the instruments and she is responding so well in terms of speech and communication, because that was one of the biggest struggles early on with her, because she’s nonverbal in that sense that she doesn’t communicate by words, just gestures and stuff. But she would use poems earlier and now it’s actually in context.

And we can use this music to actually regulate her emotions to help that communication, which is actually coming through like the verbal speech is coming through. But music, a lot of times I feel like it helps regulate her, which is like the bigger umbrella struggle that we have. Her emotional regulation is the bigger thing that we struggle with and music helps with that. So it’s sort of helping all the little pieces.

 Karla: Yeah, great. What I’ve, I’ve also noticed too with Noor is that when I first started seeing her, you know obviously with autism and things like that, you can often see that there is some inflexibility in their play, they’re in their own world, their own agendas on certain things. And I wonder what your thoughts are in terms of her flexibility and how that’s… if that’s changed a little bit from your perspective around when we are doing the music therapy.

Preet: Like I said, it all goes with that emotional regulation. If she is feeling well, she is flexible. Yes. And that comes with the music. Like I say. If you like, say something to her, if she’s super heightened anything you say to her doesn’t make sense at all to her that everything goes boom like nothing, no comprehension, no speech, nothing. But when she’s very well regulated, she will understand. She will like, comprehend what you’re trying to tell her.

She will try to communicate with you too. She will understand when we are trying to transition her into things. It’s all about that regulation and that’s where music really comes in for us. So yes, it does definitely help with that. The first breakthrough for her speech that we had was that she talked through poems. Everything was, Oh, Humpty Dumpty had a great fall, oh you’re hurt. Or like, this is the way they wash our hands, wash our hands. This is the way we do anything. So we did always sing to her. But I think that kind of only grew with music therapy because she loves that even more now.

Karla: Yes.

Preet: Singing to her. Anything we can sing to her and get through to her.

Karla: And then Noor stops. Ready? Set. Go

Noor: Go!

Karla: And then we stop.

Noor: Ready set go!

Want to know more?

You can find out more about how Karla and our Music Therapy Team can support you on our Music Therapy page, or get in touch with our friendly team via our Contact page.

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