Welcome back! Today, we are pulling back the curtain on what to expect from a therapeutic goal in Music Therapy.

When creating goals for our clients, we consider a wide range of information. We look at insights from families, other therapists working with the client, and even school or medical reports. We combine this external information with data gleaned from our own specialized intake forms and intake assessment sessions.

What is DSLM?

DSLM is the specific use of developmentally appropriate musical materials and experiences to enhance speech and language development through singing, chanting, playing musical instruments, and combining music, speech, and movement (Thaut 2005).

Put simply DSLM is the use of music/music experiences to increase speech and language skills.

Our last post regarding Neurologic Music Therapy (NMT) gave a list of definitions for each of the techniques. Now it's time to get to the nitty gritty. What is this and how can it help? We will be breaking down each NMT technique in an individual post to help our families better understand how and why we do what we do! First on our list is one of our therapist's favorites— Musical Attention Control Training or MACT.

As Neurologic Music Therapists, we employ a variety of techniques in our work. We thought it would be useful to have them all in one place as a simple point of reference. For parents and caregivers, refer to these definitions to learn the acronyms when reading our monthly documentation. For others, we hope these definitions give you an overview of Neurologic Music Therapy. Please reach out to us to learn more.

Earlier this year, our owner, Ms. Melissa, completed a 4-day intensive training in Neurologic Music Therapy. Neurologic Music Therapy (NMT) is the therapeutic application of music to cognitive, sensory, and motor dysfunctions due to neurologic disease of the human nervous system (Thaut, 1999).