Therapy Technique Tuesday
Today's technique is the negotiable/non-negotiable threshold. Are you ready??
I work with adolescents. My adolescents are very angry when boundaries and expectations are placed upon them. When they get angry, my adolescents tend to become aggressive, confrontational, and just plain mean. As a result, over the past thirty some odd years, I have learned to offer choices for things that just do not really matter to how music therapy sessions work. I call these my negotiables. The things that do matter are my non-negotiables.
Non-negotiables include anything that will harm self, others, or property. Non-negotiables also include how we speak to others, even when we are escalated or angry. These non-negotiables are things that I have to keep under control due to safety needs and requirements.
Other things are completely negotiable. Some of my groups get to select whether they sit in chairs or on the floor. Others do not due to how they respond when they get to choose. Whether students engage in what I am doing is often negotiable. Being respectful and allowing others to engage is a non-negotiable.
This boundary (that I set within the expectations of the school where I work) is completely up to me. I select which things are important to be complied with and which are not as important. I am fine with students who do not want to engage. Not everyone likes music, so why force them to do something that they do not like?
I know that I enjoyed having a bit of a choice when it came to what classes I was going to take during my adolescence. My students do not get much choice in their lives, so engagement is something that they can choose. Now, there are consequences to not engaging, but the loss of a couple of STARS in our PBIS matrix is not all that bad in the long-range scheme of things.
So, when I am thinking through my music therapy strategy, I think about the negotiables and non-negotiables as I am designing the sessions. Clients always surprise me with things I didn't think about ahead of time, of course, so I also have to make decisions in the moment. Once that decision is made, then I expect that clients will complete the directives or face consequences.
Non-negotiables - using instruments and materials correctly, maintaining personal space, keeping body parts safe and to ourselves, using manners when speaking to others, expressing personal decisions with respect towards others (e.g., saying "no, thank you" instead of "F off, B), sitting up so others cannot harm us,
Negotiables - during most TMEs, how students are sitting is negotiable (sitting up is a non-negotiable), whether they actively engage, when they rest from exertion, and countless other things during the course of every single session...
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