The Mozart Effect (Even Without Mozart)

Mozart helps autistic children read a small press release of a few weeks ago:

The Lift music therapy programme, using the Austrian composer's symphonies, can accelerate development by up to three years in one month, according to speech and language therapist Karen O'Connor.

Ms O'Connor has opened the first clinic in Dublin offering the Lift treatment, which is specifically designed to help children with autism, attention deficit disorder (ADD), attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and dyspraxia. Brain scan tests have shown that the cortex area of the brain lights up when classical music such as Mozart is played.

Aside from noting that this press release says that the "Lift treatment" is designed for children with various diagnoses---not only autism, as highlighted in the headline---the claim of development being "accelerated up to three years in one month" seems (with all due respects to Karen O'Connor) a little too......good to be true? grandiose? inflated? improbable?

And the emphasis on music put to use in the name of therapy and "accelerating development" seems to be rushing to make music "useful" and a "treatment." In our household, music is just a constant presence, from Jim's whistling jazz to Charlie humming and singing.

Charlie's been more into music than ever these past few weeks, since his teacher started teaching him to wear headphones----we had tried the little white earbuds for him previously, and he seems to much prefer the big, padded headphones. Indeed, with the iPod's volume turned up all the way, you can hear the music just fine from the headphones-acting-as-speakers and not on anyone's head. When he was very little, I played Bach (preludes and fugues) and sonatas and minuets and, yes, some Mozart amid the Chopin and Schumann. I'd place Charlie on my lap and play lullabies from this songbook: Before he could talk, Charlie signaled which song he wanted to hear by finding the painting on the page. His favorite was, indeed, called "Mozart's Lullaby," a tinkling with more than a bit of the wind-up music box about it and---when he learned, over the years, to say "this one," it was that song Charlie often turned to, with its accompanying painting of a Chardin-esque father and mother hovering tenderly over a sleeping child on a couch.

Music helped Charlie's language development and also our understanding of his communications, whether in words or without. Over the years, I learned to listen as much to the pitch and rhythm that Charlie used to figure out what words he might mean as he often emphasized the words of words, the consonants not as crisp. Without singing and music, I don't think we'd be able to communicate as much as we do with Charlie and certainly my appreciation for the other sounds the human voice can produce has grown exponentially.

But Mozart: Much as I like the "Rondo Alla Turca" and the famous sonata, Charlie's musical inclinations are elsewhere. He's been wanting to go to sleep listening to his iPod and, from the sounds of it, he continues to be more of a rock 'n' roller---clicking through the Beatles, U2, Jimi Hendrix, the Byrds, the Ramones, with some jazz violin intermixed. More and more I do think, the days of Barney are no more.

Which is all the therapy my tired ears need!

Yes, I can hardly wait to hear Charlie's (deepening---his voice is changing) voice, and Jim's. Just a few more days...........