Bobbie Brown loves what she does. “I NEVER get up and say, ‘Oh, I wish I didn’t have to go to work,’” she tells me with a smile. A lot of local parents love what she does too. Brown is the President, Founder and lead teacher of MusicTalk, a local non-profit organization she founded in 2002 to help children with special needs find a voice. MusicTalk works mainly with preschool-aged children who have Autism or other conditions which cause speech and language delays (conditions such as Down syndrome and mental retardation). The program Brown created uses music and song as its means of improving children’s communication skills, but music also serves as a reward for students in the classroom as they learn to express themselves and to socialize.

Once-silent children learn to vocalize or use sign language, and kids who could vocalize learn to verbalize (making that exciting leap from sounds to words). Bobbie has also seen children who were withdrawn, frustrated and just plain miserable grow steadily happier and more confident as they gain the ability to express themselves, learn the basics of making friends and discover they can count on a favorite song or instrument to make them smile. The program’s success highlights the special benefits of music education for preschool children with special needs, especially when combined with early intervention, but it also indicates how people of all ages and abilities benefit from music, song and movement.

A Very Personal Experience
While preschool classes are MusicTalk’s primary focus today (the program has served fifteen special needs classrooms throughout Placer County and helped over 300 children), the program began in a very different setting, with a very personal experience. In 2001, Brown’s father was struggling with advancing Alzheimer’s disease. Bobbie saw her father grow more frustrated and agitated as his ability to express himself shrank. “We’ve always been a musical family,” she says, explaining, in part, why she began playing music and singing for her father. She chose songs from her father’s youth, tunes like “A Bicycle Built for Two,” and soon discovered that while he could no longer introduce himself by name, he could almost always remember the tune and the words to an old, familiar song like “Amazing Grace.”

What’s more, music made her Dad noticeably happier. Her father enjoyed their sing-alongs so much that Brown soon made them part of her father’s weekly routine.

In October of 2001, Brown decided to put her musical training to work for other seniors. She approached some residential care facilities in Auburn to start a music program. The facilities agreed, and Brown met hospice patients, like her Dad, who could sing every word to their favorite song even if they couldn’t tell you their names. She also saw how music gave them the same emotional benefit it had provided for her father, relaxing them and improving their moods.

At first, the staff at the care facilities saw the music sessions as just a nice way of entertaining the residents, but Brown knew there were serious benefits to be gained from the program. So she persisted, continuing the music program and eventually convincing caregivers of its therapeutic value. Today the MusicTalk program, “Music for the Senior Soul,” continues to provide comfort and support to elderly individuals and groups in the Auburn area. Each encounter is designed with the seniors’ particular needs in mind, but the common goal remains the same: to promote feelings of calm and relaxation in the people it serves.

A Different Path
I asked Randi Hagerman, Medical Director of the UC Davis M.I.N.D. Institute, to explain why an Alzheimer’s patient, unable to introduce himself by name or recognize his own daughter might yet be able to sing every word to a tune he might not have heard in years. She explained, “Alzheimer’s hits the verbal/expressive part of the brain pretty dramatically, but may not hit that part of the brain where music and song are ‘locked away.’”

Because music, rhythm and lyrics live—so to speak—along different pathways in the brain from those that control regular speech, people whose speech pathways are impaired (whether due to dementia in old age or autism in early childhood) are still able to process language that comes in linked to music, and they’re still able to express themselves through song.

Asked about the uplifting effects of music therapy, Hagerman explains that this benefit isn’t just important for people’s emotional well-being, but it’s also vital to maintaining their neurological health and making the most of their cognitive abilities. She explains that depression and chronic stress (common in both dementia patients and autistic children), actually change the brain’s composition, causing brain cells to deteriorate and even die.

“There is a really strong link between depression and Alzheimer’s,” Hagerman explains. Depression is associated with diminishing brain tissue, and shrinking of the hippocampus in particular (a part of the brain related to both memory and mood); and depression causes other cognitive changes as well.

The main culprit in this process seems to be cortisol, a stress hormone that—under chronic conditions—wreaks havoc on the body, including the brain. By contributing to brain cell death, depression can actually cause certain types of dementia as people age.

So, what’s the good news? “Music, and movement (particularly dance), can reduce stress and relieve depression,” says Hagerman, who adds that exercise, in fact, has been proven to generate new brain cell growth and relieve depression in much the same way that certain antidepressant drugs get brain cells growing again.

So, by guarding against stress and encouraging healthy brain function, uplifting activities, including music and song, can help the brain (literally) stay in shape as we grow older.

And what does this have to do with toddlers, you ask? Everything!

It’s a Tough Job, Being Two
It’s extra tough if you have autism. Autism makes children hypersensitive to light, touch, smells, tastes and sound too. This is one reason autistic kids tend to be more withdrawn. Imagine the world as you know it, but with the volume cranked up too loud, lights and colors assaulting your eyes with neon intensity, offensive odors everywhere and each gentle pat on the back translated into a scrape with aggravation. You probably wouldn’t be the most outgoing kid in your class either. In fact, rocking in a corner all day might start to look pretty good.

But in the MusicTalk program, autistic kids discover stress relief in more socially acceptable forms. They also learn to tolerate, and then to even enjoy, intense sensations like the sounds that emanate from instruments like the cold bell or the thunder tube. In fact, kids learn to enjoy the music so much that favorite songs or instruments quickly become rewards for behaviors like taking turns, sharing or using words (spoken or signed).

Last year, four-year-old *Emma learned to not only verbalize (“I want the bongo drum!”), but she also learned to share and to reason (agreeing to give her classmate a turn if it bought her a little time with that drum). And instead of throwing a temper-tantrum when sounds became unbearable for her, she learned to say, “No thanks,” or simply turn the offending music off. Not surprisingly, parents are pleased.

Laura Herlow is one of those many parents who will attest to MusicTalk’s results: “With the help of MusicTalk, Jaron has been able to say words like ‘bye-bye,’ ‘mama,’ and ‘oh no’… We think MusicTalk has had a big influence in our son’s life.”

Even parents with older children will remember what a big deal it was to hear their child say, “mama” for the first time. But to the parents of a child with special needs, who might have wondered if they’d ever get to hear that sound—well, how do you even begin to describe that feeling?

“A lot of [the children] never vocalize,” Bobbie explains, “except through the music, and autism is so on the rise in Placer County.” She emphasizes the importance of early intervention, especially for children with autism. “These kids have a much better chance at communication and interaction skills if we can just get to them soon enough.”

Unfortunately, at present, MusicTalk lacks the funding it needs just to cover those kids already diagnosed as program candidates, let alone help the waiting list of classrooms that has requested the program’s services. Bobbie and her small staff serve schools in Rocklin, Roseville, Granite Bay, Lincoln and Auburn.

In a recent blow to its resources, Placer First Five, a program aimed at promoting education during the most formative years of kids’ lives and MusicTalk’s biggest supporter, recently cut the program’s funding in half. Public and private grants, along with community donations, will help keep the program running, along with Bobbie’s sheer determination, but the lack of funding is especially heartbreaking given there’s no doubt whatsoever as to the program’s effectiveness.

Ginger Mitchell, a Speech Pathologist in Placer County’s Office of Special Education, attests: “We see increased attention and increased verbalization during the MusicTalk sessions…..anticipation leading to sentence completion….obtaining results more creatively than I have been able to achieve as a language pathologist.”

Creative Teaching, Creative Learning
The creativity that goes into the program is a key part of the its success. Kids benefit from instruction tailored to their individual needs. Brown writes a lot of original music and lyrics to target the specific needs of a particular child or class. That in-depth attention extends to parents and educators too.

Brown and her small staff compile video and audio progress reports for parents, showing how students’ skills with various instruments and vocalization exercises are coming along and in what areas they might benefit from more practice or encouragement.

Fun is another key factor. Blowing bubbles, playing the kazoo, singing along with puppet shows, and preschooler karaoke is all in a day’s work for the kids, but while it feels like fun, these children are actually hard at work (and no doubt working extra hard because the work feels like play for them). Among other things, they’re practicing mouth movements and breath control, and learning how to make noises that will one day turn into words and language; they’re also practicing social skills, lengthening their attention spans and refining their spatial awareness.

Bobbie tells the story of one three-year-old boy who was basically non-verbal when he began the program. “He vocalized, but wasn’t able to verbalize.” But given a microphone and an amp, over time that child demonstrated the ability to read. Audio recordings give the children auditory feedback which helps them learn to speak. It’s also an incentive which gets them to practice. “They like hearing themselves,” she adds with a grin.

One particularly glowing parent testimonial on the MusicTalk website reads: "Jason has gone from only using “b” consonants to saying his first official word! Right after Christmas vacation he started saying “apple”! He knew what an apple was, so we gave him one. He was so proud of himself he just laughed out loud. He has added a few more words and is starting to learn to put them together. This was a really big breakthrough for us, and we can’t help but feel using the music program (which he loves) at home and having the same program used as school has made a big difference."

As children like Jason learn to communicate and interact with their world, they discover all kinds of rewards, not the least of which include their parents' happy astonishment and the sound of their own laughter.

* Some names have been changed to protect families’ privacy.

You Can Make a Difference Too
Local businesses or individuals interested in sponsoring MusicTalk programs can make a difference in the lives of preschool children in our area.
Sponsor a classroom, provide instruments and other supplies, support special events, or make a general donation through the MusicTalk website: MusicTalk.org.
Or contact Bobbie Brown: 530-637-4997. bobbie@musictalk.org.
All contributions are greatly appreciated and fully tax-deductible.