Dance Therapy for Autistic Children Week 2 Outcomes

Week 2 - Session 2

Today I saw wonderful developments in our dance therapy class.  The music and the dance inspire positive outcomes. 

Boy 1 - last week at our first class I noted that he needed to learn to respect space and learn when it was appropriate and inappropriate to hug.  Well, this week he came into class, gave me a kiss on the cheek with a hug and that was very sweet.  I told him thank you and then I showed him his space and my space.  During class he approached me several times to hug, but when I redirected him to his space he positively responded.  At the end of class he hugged me, I thanked him and told him how well he'd done today.  He is a happy boy.  I'm delighted that we're moving in the right direction regarding space.  I hope this week with some prompting that I can start to get him to verbalize responses.  He currently is expressing facially and physically, but not with many words. 

Boy 2 - last week I noted that he didn't want me to engage him.  If I moved toward him physically or even if our eyes met he'd move backwards.  Today, I hoped that I'd be able to start gaining his trust.  Great news... today when he entered the room he immediately said "Hi" this was the best hello I've ever heard.  Today, I chose not to physically approach him, but he responded positively when we made eye contact.  We are building trust.  Most exciting his mom sent a note to let me know how he enjoyed last week's class.  He told his mom about dance, Ms. Beth and a dance we did called "The Butterfly".  At today's class he actually requested that we do "The Butterfly" dance....hooray we're having fun and communicating!  My goal for the next session is to continue to build his trust.  I'm going to introduce the concept of taking turns being a leader.  I hope this will help him and his classmates build more confidence interacting not only with me, but with the others in class too.

Boy 3 - was on vacation, so there is nothing new report this week.

This was the second week of a dance therapy program for the children who are participating in my class at The Minnesota Autism Center.  I'm documenting our outcomes over the next three months, so today's session was number 2 of 12.  The children are between 6-8 years of age and all are boys.  They are imersed in intensive Applied Behavior Anaylsis (ABA Therapy) all day at the center.  The dance therapy program that I provide is a once a week add-on therapy that is meant to be fun for the children and at the same time provide some new learning opportunities.  I'm going to document our outcomes with the hope that what I document will help others.  Visit my website if you'd like to read about the first week and check back to read about ongoing sessions.