Working with parents and their emotionally neglected children, being a facilitator and a role model

This paper is part of a symposium with Amelia Oldfield as Chair. It revolves around how to approach and intervene with at risk families in music therapy specifically emotionally neglected children and their parents. In improving parent-child interaction, these families often need clear role modelling for them to try out new ways of communicating. For any therapist working in this area, it can be difficult to combine role modelling with being a facilitator for the parent-child relationship. The family needs to see and experience how they might chance without the disadvantages of the therapist forming an alliance with either child or parent. To help the family as much as possible in developing new ways of interacting and breaking inappropriate interaction patterns, the therapist must show the family how without doing it for them. The presentation has its focus on how music therapy can contribute to this particular dilemma including both receptive and active techniques. The flexibility and structure of music and it ability to contain strong emotional material within this particular population with be elaborated upon. The paper includes results from a randomised controlled study on effect of music therapy with parents and their emotionally neglected children.