Mental health and wellbeing column: Caring for carers
Jessica Atkinson
Tuesday, March 1, 2022
In Chiltern Music Therapy's third contribution to our mental health and wellbeing column, music therapist Jessica Atkinson reflects on how music making can be a safe space for carers as well as their children in early years settings.
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The beginnings and ends of days in an early years setting have a familiar rhythm: a crowd of parents, grandparents, neighbours, friends, adult siblings or child-minders gather around the doorway to collect their young child. Some of these will be caring for children who have additional needs, even if these needs are not yet acknowledged or diagnosed. These informal carers, (even though many may not think of themselves as such), can experience the pre-school years as an intense period of hope, loss, and discovery: hope that all will work out as they had expected; loss of the mainstream family-life they had imagined; and discovery of the unique human being that is their child within their own special family.
A change of focus
Early years settings are beacons of care for families. However, the attention is often primarily on the child, and it is easy for the needs of carers to be missed, or simply lost in among the other pressures. Informal carers can be vulnerable, and surveys show that they can experience a vast range of difficulties, from reduced income and leisure time to poor physical and mental health. Others experience isolation, loneliness and depression. In my work with many families over the years, I have become aware of how fragile the hope and discovery can be at this stage of family-building, and of how sharing music can create a safe and healing space.
Integration of music
Nurseries, play groups, pre-schools, and children's centres all share a common feature: they frequently weave music into their daily programmes for all age groups. They are places where I, and many music therapists, love to work, because everyone is used to bursting into song! It takes a small but significant step to change these children's activities into a safe and inclusive space for carers and their young children with additional needs.
Many different practitioners bring music into early years settings and do great work engaging children in exploring sound, discovering songs, dancing, and listening. If a setting wishes to support informal carers that they are aware of, some slightly different approaches will be helpful. Carers are immersed in a world of mainstream child development; they will be regularly meeting other parents and carers whose children are talking, walking and reaching milestones. They will see children with these skills on TV and online, on the bus, in shops, at the swimming pool, in the park. Each instance can prompt comparison and anxiety on behalf of their own child. They must decide: do they share these worries and ‘burden’ other parents, or cope alone and experience isolation? Many choose the latter. So, if nothing else, the music session must be a proactively inclusive event, particularly if it involves a mixture of families whose children have additional needs and others whose children don't.
Meeting needs
How can the music space be fully inclusive and differing needs be met? The following ideas describe some approaches that I have found useful:
- Make it clear that the group is for the adults, rather than for the children, even though they come along! This way, they will feel entitled to be there and will engage as themselves, particularly if you request that mobile phones are put away.
- Develop activities that are at the pace of engagement that every child can cope with: if one child uses a reclining wheelchair and needs a parent to facilitate moving their arm, leave as much time as that child needs. Make a game with the other children of stopping like musical statues to listen to the first child. If the parent/carer hears their own child, they start to believe that their child belongs, is needed, and is worth listening to.
- Always, tirelessly, model positive feedback about everyone present, adult and child alike. If you refer to a non-verbal vocalisation that a child makes throughout a song by saying, ‘It's so lovely to hear his voice. I think he wants more because he hasn't stopped yet!’, then that child's parent/carer will believe he wasn't just a nuisance, doing the wrong thing and failing to end, and other parents/carers will start to recognise the musical intention in a child's participation.
It can be hard to meet diverse needs, but it is ok to say that and make it a shared adventure. As trust slowly builds, musical spaces can offer a place where different moods are gently explored through careful choices of listening and songs and conversations can start to happen that reduce isolation. And it can be fun!
