Expecting the unexpected

Every child we work with connect and learn in different ways. While working with children of all abilities, we are like investigators, discovering ways to connect with them. It can feel like a shifting maze at times. For instance, a strategy that works one session, totally falls flat in the other.

I remember a beautiful butterfly song that emerged in one of the sessions a while back when I first started. The child loved it, I loved it. Everything was well and good. The following session came and the only person in the room who was enthusiastic about the butterfly song was yours truly. No matter how I pitched the butterfly song ( e.g. slow, fast, changing tonalities) to the kid, "Nyet!" No butterflies. The butterfly had fluttered away. I missed the whole point then. It was really not about the butterfly song, but what was in it that worked in the moment, and where the child was in the moment!

It behooves us to reflect and think about how and why an intervention or a piece of music worked. It could be..

• the tonality of the piece

• the rhythm

• the character of the music

• the context in which the intervention was used

• the mood of the child when he/she was in that particular session...

So many possibilities.

I like what a friend shared with me once, " We are not working with dolls but lively children with lots of potential!" How true and encouraging that is!

Keep investigating, keep discovering, keeping musicing!

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