music, therapy, and me

It is the first day of the last break of the summer - what I like to call my Fall break even though Autumn is still two months away from officially starting. We get to work from home today, so I am going to spend my time putting together a new tool for my music therapy room - a visual schedule. I have never used a visual schedule for my group sessions because I do not often have a set session strategy for what I do with my clients. I often change my mind when each group walks into the room to accommodate how my clients are interacting with me, with the music I play, and with each other. So, I have never really had a good way of making a visual schedule that covers last minute adaptations. I think I have found a way to do this now. I am going to use generic terms for the types of things we do in music therapy. This will allow me to have a basic structure while still allowing for changes to occur in the moment. I will also use this format in a general manner for most of my groups. Being ...

Do you ever have times in the year where you find yourself affected by many different things simultaneously? I am two days post-vacation and am missing my family members who are now safely tucked away in their own homes. I still work in a warm room, but my room is a bit cooler than it has been for sometime now. I have an itchy neck area - I think I have a rash there that I will need to treat with my old ointment. It is not currently very hot here, but the heat will be building through the weekend. I am not feeling very effective in my personal life at the moment. I do not know why I am feeling this way, but it probably has something to do with my summer SAD. I do not enjoy summer much in this area of the world, but it is what it is. I has also taken me lots of time to acknowledge that I do not like how I feel and act during the summer months. I am not doing much to counteract this as far as medication goes, but I am doing things to help me keep going through the heat and the humidity t...

'Tis the season of watching classroom set-ups on social media. Do you know the videos I'm talking about? The ones where teachers set up their super cute classroom themes and bulletin boards in a fast-forward type video? My sister, who is an elementary school teacher, is currently in the process of getting her classroom theme put together. I always love watching the creativity of others in setting up their environments, and I am always jealous of their space and ability to keep things up on the wall with their students. My students and my space are not conducive to cute themes and color-coded, coordinated wall decorations. The things that I have up on the walls of my music therapy room are functional rather than coordinated. My room is already decorated with lots of paintings from various murals, so things are already as busy as I want them to be. These facts don't stop me from wanting a classroom where I could make my own cute theme happen though. As I am a week away from t...

I haven't written since Wednesday this week. I seem to be falling into a pattern of not writing as much, but I want to write more. I'm just not doing it. I have no reason other than just not feeling like writing in the mornings lately. There's not much going on that is different from other seasons in my life, but writing still just feels like too much right now. I am trying really hard to figure some things out. I am tired. My body is doing strange things - gotta love perimenopause. I feel like I am stagnating yet again. I have lots of ideas, but absolutely no impetus to follow through on those ideas. Does anyone else have this existence? Okay. That's enough self-pity. Time to get started with something more productive. I spent some time on Tuesday laminating things for music therapy. I have been spending lots of time at work making things for other people, so it was nice to have some time to just sit and laminate things for my use rather than giving things away. I have...

I just remembered that I have a small room carpet in the back of my car that needs to be removed from said car to be cleaned and so I can stuff my car full of groceries and, hopefully, some bookshelves or chairs for my home as I go out and about. I think I will dump the carpet in the garage for steam cleaning and park in my driveway for a bit until it dries and is ready to head back to my new (old) office space. I haven't had a carpet in that space before, but I am looking forward to getting it. If the rug doesn't clean up the way I think it will, I will just dump it into a local dumpster and be done with it. That thought, though, just popped into my head as I was debating whether I should order a big breakfast from a local restaurant before going to get my grocery order. Then, I remembered the rug. Over the past day, I managed to spend money on food and medications as well as on a bunch of poly storage folders for my communication binder system. I need to print those pages out...

Are you ever stuck in a real-life nightmare where all your biggest insecurities are pushed at over and over again? I'm in that sort of situation at work right now, and no matter how I communicate what I need from the people who are part of the situation, I feel like I am ignored. BIGGEST NIGHTMARE FOR ME, EVER!! All of this stuff is leading me into digestion problems, waking up super early, not eating as much as I need to to sustain my best brain power, and constant second-guessing myself.  The good news is that there are good things happening as well. I have a CMTE course coming up this weekend that I am co-leading with a music therapy colleague and co-worker of mine. I am not quite ready to get it all done, but I am doing pretty well with that planning. No one has signed up for the CMTE course that I am offering the next weekend, so I have plans to do all the recordings during the time I've carved out for the live presentation. Music therapy sessions are going well. I w...

Several people have noted on posts lately that their well-intentioned comments have been taken to an entirely different level by people who are reading things from their own perspective and are commenting from that perspective rather than from the perspective of the original poster. Boy, do I understand the frustrations of someone taking your post and making it into something other. I don't do much posting on social media sites about my thoughts or products because of a situation which happened many years ago. I posted some thoughts that I shared on this blog, and I got yelled at by someone who (I think) didn't read the piece that I wrote. This person took offense that I would write about internships and interns and started to accuse me of acting illegally because internships in music therapy are (mostly) unpaid. I engaged with this person for about 10 exchanges and then I disconnected from the conversation. The person involved was not interested in what I had to say and ju...

Random picture of my Bella-cat... just because I can! Yesterday, I got my first nomination for some music therapy happy mail for a deserving music therapist. I am looking forward to making up a box of stuff and sending it out to someone that I don't know. I hope that it will brighten up the day of the recipient! The best thing about this nomination is that it was truly anonymous! I have NO idea who nominated the recipient, but thank you. Thank you so much for allowing me to do this on your behalf and for the benefit of someone you have a vested interest in!! I love it when we support one another as fellow music therapists and as human beings. I think I could support about two more nominations this time around, so think about who could use a bit of music therapy support and NOMINATE please!! I will not publish the names of any person nominated, so feel free to nominate - I get the comments and make decisions about publication - nothing with names is published!! I will post a...

I spent some time this weekend, combing through my clip-art files to make a food-based visual aid for my Teachers Pay Teachers store . It is almost finished, and I am getting ready to release it to the world. (If you are interested, it's called "I Want To Eat, Eat, Eat, Eat, Eat.") This will be a multi-functional visual aid chock full of food-related pictures and word options for clients, and I am pretty excited to be able to add it to my files for my clients. It's going to be a bit pricier than my other files because it was so much work, but it will still be reasonable for those of us out there who need inexpensive materials for our clients. This file will be another one of my generic music therapy tools. In the visual aid, I do offer sheet music and lyric sheets for a specific song, but there are so many different ways you can use food pictures in songs that I am sure that this will become a worn-out visual pretty soon! That reminds me, I have to make another ...

On Wednesday evening, my anxiety came to a head with me crying hysterically on the phone while talking to my father about how I was feeling. My father, who doesn't really like to address deep feelings, suggested that I call my sister who is better at addressing those feelings. So, I did. After talking to her, I made some proactive changes to my sleeping and went to bed. I tossed and turned all night, sweating through my pajamas, and waking every hour or two. When I woke up yesterday morning, I was exhausted and sick. I got dressed in my work uniform and attempted to blog (several different times). I took the last dose of my stomach medication and prepared to go to work, but I couldn't get going. I called and arranged for a sick day. Then, I went back to sleep until the cat woke me up. I went out to get some medication, a new thermometer (mine always seem to go missing when I want to take my temperature, some water filters, and a new book to read.  Isn't it amazing how t...

I found myself back into the writings of Mercedes Pavlicevic this weekend. I finished chapter eight (of thirteen - only five more weeks to go), and, as always, found myself thinking about what I do in a deeper manner. I wonder why I didn't read this book before now. It would have enriched my clinical education so much. Maybe I wasn't in a place to understand it until now. That's what I'm going to believe - I'm reading it when I need it the most. I am enjoying this book. Chapter eight, entitled "Songs without words: Music in communication," addresses how we, as humans, develop our communication skills outside of the musical environment (but with ramifications for music therapists). The majority of the information presented comes to us from infant and infant-mother research and includes articles that are familiar to me from my education in cognitive psychology and human development. I'll be re-investigating my article archive for the names Trevart...

Today's therapeutic music experience (TME) is about intentional communication. I have many students who are able to communicate, but who often choose not to do so. While I completely support the idea that everyone can and should communicate the way they want to, I also want my students to be self-advocates and communicate what they think, want, and need. This song helps me communicate that desire to my clients. This was written before my expansion of ideas and you can tell. There isn't much detail included. I Can/Should Use My Words Therapeutic Music Experience Mary Jane Landaker, MME, MT-BC Purpose : To reinforce communicative behaviors; encourage client discussion; socialization Source : Original song. © 2010 by Mary Jane Landaker, MME, MT-BC Materials : Optional – PECS icons, words, pictures Environment : None specified Song/Chant/Words :   I should use my words, I should use my words. I should use my words to ask for things. ...