Systems in Music Therapy: Six Things Rule

As you know, one of my biggest issues with myself is my penchant for stuff - all sorts of stuff. You want a Disney movie to watch? Chances are that I have it on my movie shelves (that's right - shelves). You want a book to read? I have hundreds and hundreds. You need some toilet paper tubes for a craft project? I've got quite a few (I NEVER throw those away - you can do SO much with them - I just heard my mother's voice in my head saying that very phrase...). I like stuff.

I am quite sure that I would have ended up as a special educator if I had not heard about music therapy when I was 14 years old. I love going to educational supply stores and browsing through the bulletin board strips and the calendar pieces and the manipulatives and the books and curricula and the tools that teachers use on a regular basis. I love all that stuff, and I have to restrain myself from buying it all! If I had become a special educator, I am sure that I would have almost everything that is in those stores. Since I am a therapist, I have to keep myself from giving into my urge to get all the stuff. Seriously - I want ALL THE STUFF!

Because of this urge and love of all things educational, I have developed a rule for myself - a system to assist with organization (and my financial well-being).

It's my "SIX THINGS" rule.

I'm going to be releasing a Music Therapy Morsel about this rule later today, so I'm not going to get into it too much right now, but this rule has made me stop and consider before I buy something.

This particular system allows me to think about music therapy uses for every type of material or instrument that I bring into my music therapy space. I have to figure out six things in a moment in order to justify my "want" (because, I really don't "need" anything any more). If I can't do that, then I have to put the thing back.

Like I said in the beginning of all of this, this is a rule that I have for myself - six things. I'm not really sure where the number six came from, but this has been my arbitrary mood since I started my career. I wonder if any of my classmates have this rule as well - if they do, then it probably started with my educational upbringing. If not, then it may have been just my own brain coming up with something quite random.

The only thing that I know for sure is that this particular rule has been one of my guidelines as long as I have been a therapist.

Do you want to make a visual aid? Fine - come up with six ways to use this visual.

Ooh, look at that soft, squishy earth ball. What are six things I can do with this thing?

TME database snapshot

Now, when I put myself through this exercise, I have to come up with six songs, six different goal areas, or a combination of the two before I can buy or make what I have in mind. I try really hard to write down my ideas as I come up with them so I can put them into my TME database as soon as possible.

TME snapshot - with editing marks, sorry about that - yet another system

Once those things enter into my TME database, I have a good start on intervention design for my clients. Everything works within my bigger system of TME (oops, didn't spell that out - therapeutic music experience) development and music therapy treatment for my clients.


This week's visual aid came from a Teachers Pay Teachers purchase of life skill pictures. One of my "NTM" TMEs this week was a piggyback about doing chores, and these pictures that I found were perfect for rehearsing the sequence of specific things. Here's a link to the file that I used. I had the one song format, but I needed five more things to do with this bundle of life skills to justify the expense (even $10.00 can be too much to spend on something for only one thing to do). So, I started thinking. I had my new piggyback song, Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush (you know, the verses "this is the way we feed the dog, feed the dog,...etc.), a TME that I've done before with task analysis and robots (don't ask), but I still need three more things to justify keeping them in my music therapy clinic storage.

Because I have already made this visual aid, I want to find or create three more things. I purposefully made the visuals as generic as possible. I did not include the song on the file folder activities, I color coded the folders with yellow which indicate academic/cognitive themes for the TME, and the title just indicates the chore included inside the folder. This way I can use the same visual for all of the TMEs that I develop.

So, my six rules system leads me into my visual aid making system and my color coding system which leads me into my database system and my sessions strategizing system and then pulls me into my goal writing system... head spinning yet??

Smaller systems working into bigger systems. It all works for me!!