Music Therapy Peeves - Pet and Otherwise

This will be a rant. I apologize in advance of the entire post and let you know that I really don't mean to be negative, but there are some things that just have to be said, you know?

Here are my Music Therapy peeves -

• Bloggers who don't update their blogs - I love trolling the blogosphere for the thoughts, ideas, and therapeutic music experiences of other music therapists. I love seeing what others think about music as a therapeutic medium, but I hate when someone has started something interesting and then just plain old stopped writing...
• Music therapists who are sloppy about idea sources - It is frustrating to find an idea that has no indication of who originally composed or developed the idea. As someone who heard a person take public credit for a song composed by me (and taught to this person during her internship which was right after mine in the same facility), I try to make sure that I know who comes up with ideas and songs so I don't take credit for someone else's work. It's not easy, but it is ethical. So, source your TMEs, people!
• The attention grabbers - you know the ones - everything they do is just perfect and they have to let everyone else know about it. Ugh. I really do not need to know that you are the greatest therapist in the world! I think I am a pretty good therapist, but I know I am prone to errors, mistakes, and tripping over myself. I admit it freely and indicate this often. There are others who do not appear to ever have any human moments. Every thing is just plain old sunny in their music therapy worlds.

Whew, that list wasn't as long as I thought is was going to be at the beginning of this post. That's good.

You know, it's time to get off the peeve train and get back on board the creativity train heading towards the west... (Smooth transition?? I don't think so, but it's what it is on this early Saturday morning!)

There was some creative juice flowing this week in my corner of the music therapy room. My current intern is leading all of her sessions right now, so I am starting to have some time to think about things. This is good and not good at the same time. Let me elaborate...

I went on a blogosphere troll the other day - just typed "music therapy activities for teenagers" into Google and went from there. I found lots of crap on the interweb. Lots of statements that just verified the three pet peeves that I listed above. Lots of partial ideas, and lots of promised updates that never arrived.

One of the things that I did find was a play therapy text of ideas developed by play therapists. Here is the link: http://www.lianalowenstein.com/e-booklet.pdf . This book is full of ideas for how to engage families and kids in interactive play and exploration. Now, none of it is music therapy, it is all play therapy, but a creative music therapist, such as myself (because I am the greatest music therapist in the WORLD and you all should quake before my freaking awesomeness - wink, wink!) should be able to adapt these ideas to music therapy interactions and experiences pretty easily.

It is amazing that you can start with a couple of words in the search box on the computer screen and end up with an entirely new crop of TMEs to use with clients.

Time to go shake off the peeves and pick up the creative process.

On a completely unrelated note, I have finished a crocheted slipper for my mom and am halfway done with the next one...

So, on with the creative thinking and crafting trend. Have a great week!!