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Date:         Tue, 13 Oct 1992 08:00:32 -0700
              <AUTISM@SJUVM.BITNET>
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              bennett@MILTON.U.WASHINGTON.EDU
From:         Thomas Bennett <bennett@U.WASHINGTON.EDU>
Subject:      Re: expressing emotion

James,

My observation of my son certainly substantiates your comments on music as
therapy. When he was about 9 we would be sitting in the living room after
church, and suddenly realize that we were listening to the hyms that had
been sung coming up from the piano in the rec room. Karl, our son, would
play the hymns with harmony, improvisations, etc. After a few months of
this we started him on piano lessons. He could be a great pianist, but he
insists on doing everything his own way. He advanced very quickly into
difficult classical pieces (he has amazing finger dexterity), but insisted
on doing everything his own way. He made a game out of putting his own
improvisations into the pieces to see if the teacher could catch them. The
teacher would get very frustrated at this, but often would admit that the
way Karl played a piece is probably the way Mozart would have written it
if he'd had a litle more time to think about it.

The problem with all this was Karl's refusal to do any significant
practicing. Anything that is imposed really sets him off, so we gave him
the choice of whether or not to take lessons, but if he chose to take them,
he had an obligation to practice at least half an hour a day. so, after
six years, he quit. At least he got a good foundation in what music is and
a love of classical music, so I hope that he will return to it some day.
In the meantime, dropping the piano gives us a little more time to bear
down on the academics to see if we can qualify him for college (he is 16 now).

Tom Bennett

On Mon, 12 Oct 1992, James Bordner wrote:

> Carolyn writes:
>
> >                                                       I mentioned this to
> > point out that being a 'controlled autistic' is not always beneficial to the
> > individual - sometimes I think it is better to let autistic children express
> > their emotions in whatever way they want (provided their behaviour is not
> > self-injurious) rather than trying to teach them that that is not the way
> > 'normal people' behave.
>
> Very good point-- I doubt keeping emotions "bottled up" is very healthy,
> so in a way, not allowing autistic children to express their emotions in their
> own way may itself be considered self-injurious in some sense.  The hard part
> is, of course, finding a method of expression that is both acceptable and
> one they can use.
>
> When I was young I became very interested in music.  I started learning to
> play the organ and singing in my church choir when I was around 10.  I think
> this has helped me a lot over the years.  First, it gives me an "emotional
> outlet"; I've received several comments from people about how emotional my
> organ playing is.  Also, I find practicing very relaxing-- when I get stressed
> out over having lots of homework or whatever I sit down at my keyboards and
> play through a few Bach works.  The problem with that is I tend to loose track
> of time and spend hours playing when I should be doing other things.  Like,
> say, my homework! :-)
>
> Someone recently asked about play therapy for autistics.  Has there been
> anything along the lines of music therapy I wonder?
>
> --james
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