To Madi, For Her Kindness & Caring…

As many of you know, there is another incredibly cool music therapist who works with Tony during one of his two weekly sessions with Emily. Madi has worked with Tony for over a year and a half now at NMTSA and, like Emily, has always believed in his ability to progress. As a mom, I treasure both my children. I do know, however, exactly how hard helping our little man move forward can be.

When Madi talks to me about each of the sessions she participates in, she always focuses on the positive and finds something good to say about Tony and what he is doing no matter what has happened. This may seem like a small thing, but my kiddo has a wide array of challenges, and so this gentle display of only the good stuff leaves me choked up any time I think about it. Many people miss those improvements with Tony, because they are small and oftentimes slow coming. I am profoundly grateful that Madi recognizes them and celebrates them with us.

When we were talking once about how grateful I am for the work she and Emily do with Tony and their patience with him, Madi told me that they love working with him. I know she means it because I see that in everything they do. I am very grateful to Madi for choosing to work with Emily, Tony, and our family because I know she did not have to take this assignment. Madi, thank you for showing so much kindness to my son. You are one of the bright spots in both of our worlds, and our family loves you!

The Star Drawing Exercise

Last year I attended a training session at NMTSA, the clinic Tony receives music therapy from. While there was a lot of great information presented at this meeting, if I had to pick one thing from this session that I would want anybody to experience it would be the star drawing exercise. Suzanne, the clinic founder and director, instructed us to pair up. One person would hold a mirror, and one person would be trying to copy shapes and draw a star between the lines of two other stars. However, a notebook was to be held over the copying surface, covering it so that the person drawing could only look at the mirror to see hand placement and movement.

This exercise is designed to replicate the difficulties experienced by individuals with neurological disorders who may struggle with things like motor planning. Sometimes people wonder how someone can understand what they need to do and not be able to get their body to do it. I think doing this exercise encourages a blossoming of understanding for just how difficult movements and learning can be for individuals with disorders or conditions that have impacted their neurology. I can tell you it was very difficult for me to get done, and my star had very erratic looking lines that jerked wildly back and forth in spots. And for those of you who don’t know me well, I have taken many an art class, and I have had drawing lessons before, so I was surprised to struggle that much with it. I found this exercise to be quite humbling and enlightening.

I am attaching a link for directions and guidelines to something similar below. I feel like these instructions are good, it provides you with a star template, and I think the grading portion gives you an idea of how easily it would be for someone with motor planning difficulties to become discouraged. However, you do not need to do the recommended 30 attempts unless you really want to see how much you could improve over time 😉

http://media.hhmi.org/biointeractive/activities/mirror/mirror-tracing-activity-generic.pdf