A young man with autism finds his voice through music therapy

While working with a young man with autism this week, I had an amazing experience.  The young man is hypoverbal, he rarely speaks.  The music therapy is helping him to speak more in the sessions and even in general.

This week I decided to improvise a song about him playing on the drum.  He is singing more and more of familiar songs so I thought I would try to get him to sing something new in that moment.  I set up a song with repeating words, and then left out the word drum to see if he would sing it.  He did which was great, but then something unexpected happened.  He started singing an improvised song himself about playing the drum.  It was amazing.  He continued singing for about 5 minutes.  It was very exciting to see him find his voice through the music.