Music is fantastic therapy for children with autism
My son is practising the piano as I write this and it’s the sweetest sound. He has spent two years working slowly through the same level, but it doesn’t matter; he’s improving and the benefits of music therapy and music lessons have been clear and measurable. I wish he had started sooner.
My son has autism, a neuro-developmental disability frequently portrayed as a communication disorder or behavioural problem. The reality is more complex. Autism is a whole body disorder that may affect motor skills, impair sensory function, cause sleep and gut issues, along with the more commonly discussed social and verbal communication and rigid and repetitive behaviours.
At 10, my son still has difficulty using a fork, doing up buttons or tying shoelaces. It’s not intellectual delay that makes these tasks difficult — he could read maps from age three and memorize complex bus schedules or patterns by age four — but fingers that lack typical muscle and dexterity.
No one talks much about this side of autism.
He spent years in occupational therapy using play-based strategies to improve his fine motor and muscle development, with much success. But later it was music that brought significant improvement.
First we tried music therapy, where our son worked with a therapist to achieve clinical (and not musical) goals, such as improved communication. Then we turned to more formal piano lessons intended for kids on the autism spectrum.
When he started, his hands lay flat on the keys, with several unable to move individually without significant effort. But it came, week by week, along with his sense of accomplishment at learning to read music, master songs and play both hands at the same time.
Other parents remember their child’s first steps with welledup tears. For me, it’s piano scales played without struggle, fluid fingers working their way up and down the keyboard.
We’ve seen music pay dividends in other significant ways. We noticed his attention span lengthen. His general confidence improved and his stress fell. He became proud he was doing something other than therapy, like other kids.
Why didn’t we do this sooner? None of the many autism experts we consulted in the early days mentioned music as a way to help, which is surprising because science supports its use.
A Cochrane meta-analysis of studies addressing the power of music interventions on autism found that music therapy improved social interaction, communicative skills, imitating behaviour, emotional reciprocity, social skills, quality of child-parent relationships and joy.
Joy! No other autism therapy I’ve studied includes joy as a measurable outcome.
Another earlier review flags the potential for musical training in kids with autism to improve joint attention, multi-sensory perception, motor development and the ability to foster social connections. Learning music also engages multiple areas of the brain and could possibly promote connectivity between different regions of the brain.
The review ends with a call for health and education practitioners to “diversify autism interventions” and to promote the use of musicbased approaches. I couldn’t agree more. Some studies show kids with autism may already have enhanced pitch memory and perception. So it’s about building on potential strengths too.
Other studies not specific to autism show music training improves what researchers call auditory and rhythm discrimination. Music can also increase dopamine levels and improve moods. Music therapy has also been linked to improving mental health, reducing anxiety, improving sleep and even improving gait in a range of other disorders.
The best part? Music interventions have no negative side effects. They also don’t try to cure or fix the individual with autism. Music offers, instead, a means for expression, growth and development in their own time and voice.