When a child like Samuel experiences trauma, it changes their brain chemistry (Foran 4). It hurts the way that the hemispheres of the brain interact with each other, which damages thinking and emotional processing in a child’s brain.
One of the things that music therapy seeks to do is to “rewire the brain” (Foran 4). But music also has been shown to have an effect on a person’s brain chemistry. And that exposure to music can help undo some of the damage that trauma has on children’s brains.
Music is processed in both hemispheres of the brain. This encourages the transfer of information from one hemisphere to the other, undoing some of the damage that trauma has done (Foran 5).
Recent research also suggests that music and emotions are processed in the same neural networks of the brain, stimulating emotional responses in the children to music (Moore and Hanson-Abromeit). This can begin healing the damage that trauma has caused so many of these children.
Because of its ability to change brain chemistry, music helps children learn to regulate and process their emotions in healthy ways. Learning to emotionally regulate as a child is an important factor in future success in their adult lives. Those who never learn to self regulate are at a higher risk for mental health diagnoses when they are older, while those who learn how to healthily regulate their emotions do better socially and emotionally as adults (Moore and Hanson-Abromeit).
Unfortunately, emotional regulation is something most of these traumatized children have never learned to do.
Music is one way for them to learn how.
One of the benefits of music as therapy is that it stirs up emotions in the moment, allowing children to experience difficult emotions in a safe space (Moore and Hanson-Abromeit). In this space, they can relearn how to interact with the feelings associated with hard memories.
According to one article, music creates a starting point for children to start processing difficult experiences or emotions (Smyth and Nobel 2). Music brings them back to the feelings associated with a stressful memory, and the therapist can help guide them through those emotions from there. Children are able to reprocess those emotions and practice healthy ways to deal with them.
Introducing music into the lives of these children is a way to help restore their childhoods. Music is a normal and healthy part of the relationship between most caregivers and children.
It’s even believed that the way mothers speak to their young children, and the way the children speak back, can be musical (Barnes). Music serves as a pathway to bonding between a caregiver and a child (Moore and Hanson-Abromeit).
This bonding effect of music has the ability to stretch beyond that of mother and child, and can bond groups of people together. It creates space for people to gather together with a shared goal. And the effects of that are powerful. It builds community. Making music with other people can transform a shy, scared child into an engaged, laughing participant.
For a child like Samuel, music has the ability to turn his life around.
The trauma that he's suffered is unthinkable, and has a drastic effect on his life today. Music can give him the power to face those memories and allows space for him to heal from some of the damage that those experiences have caused. Kinship Alive would give him this access to music, and through that, access to healing. Through the healing that music can provide, Samuel will be better able to process what has happened to him, and help him build bonds with the caregivers and children in his Kinship.
Music can help restore Samuel’s childhood.
