Music Therapy For Autism Music therapy for treating autism has been showing great progress in recent years. Many parents have discovered that successful use of music therapy for autism results in a notable change in an autistic child's temperament and general ability to learn. For those who are autistic, music is readily understood, but speech is often too complex, or even goes unnoticed by the autistic. Using music therapy for autism may work by circumventing the autistic child's speech deficiencies in order to communicate directly with the part of the mind used for music. If you have an autistic child and haven't tried music therapy for treating autism, you may want to look into what music can do to help your child. Music therapy is more than just playing music for an autistic child. Music therapy for autism involves using a receptive part of the mind to communicate with the mind, rather than simply focusing on an unreceptive part of the mind. For normal children, various forms of speech are the receptive part of the mind for communication, so we teach them and interact with them using speech. So it only makes sense that the autistic mind, being receptive to music, should be communicated with through music. You can take things a step further than just music therapy for autism by adding in other educational elements with the music. You can play games centered around music to help your autistic child improve social interaction. You can attempt to make eye contact a central part of singing and instrument playing. You should take advantage of the music therapy for autism to also teach speech skills. Make speech a part of music. The autistic child will love music, but typically will struggle with speaking and listening. Singing words and clapping to rhythm can help add emphasis to speech that is normally lacking when an autistic child speaks. This may help to make speech a more meaningful part of communication for the autistic child. When you begin music therapy for treating autism, you may be surprised to find out just how gifted your autistic child is with music. Some autistic children have special musical skills that are rare in ordinary people. Perfect pitch is found at much higher rates in autistic children than in normal children. Often an autistic child will pick up a musical instrument very quickly. Even those autistic children without extraordinary skills in music tend to learn things related to music much more quickly in relationship to how quickly they learn other things. The key to making successful use of music therapy for autism is to link the autistic child's strong perception of music to other areas of the autistic child's life and education.

Autism Fact #1 Because of the special way autistic minds function, normal teaching methods don't work. Understanding how the autistic mind functions, allows you to take advantage of this functionality to provide specialized teaching that will help young autistic minds learn much more rapidly than they could with standard teaching methods.

Autism Fact #2 The autistic mind tends to function in a visual manner. Specialized teaching for autism makes heavy use of pictures. Using words to describe something is nearly useless. Providing pictures of what you are describing is much more successful. Even better though is taking the child to see the actual item or place being described.

Autism Fact #3 Take advantage of the natural skills an autistic child may have, instead of focusing on weaker points. It is interesting to note that although autistic children tend to be visual and are often very good at drawing, they can also be very good with music. Take advantage of this by creatively using music and art as part of teaching other topics.