The student and the teacher sit facing one another, their feet on the drum pedals, drumsticks in their hands. Autism may make the 10-year-old’s speech unique, it may make his attention variable, but right now he is communicating with his teacher in a different dimension, in a language he can feel.
“Can you go from there back into the beat?”
“I got you.”
And the 10-year-old lays down a funk groove with panache, does a fill around the toms and then leans back into the groove, accenting the off beats as his face settles into a quiet, confident smile.
The teacher laughs and hits the rim of his snare drum. “You rock!”
The kid grins.
There is no more basic proof of being alive than our own heartbeat. From the rhythm of our cells anticipating day and night, caused by the rotation of our planet, to the seasons moving in rhythm with the circling earth, from the rhythm of our breath, rhythm is what connects us to each other. Even the rhythm of our vibrating vocal cords allows us to connect with one another. But our hearts falter for children who struggle to make this connection.
The number of children diagnosed with autism in the 1980s was 1 out of every 2,000 children. Today, the CDC estimates that 27.6 per 1,000 eight-year-olds in the U.S. has an autism spectrum disorder, or ASD.
Words may fail them, but there is another way for kids to communicate, to connect in another dimension.
Soundtrack for Learning
According to Mai Abe, founder of Creative Vibes Music Therapy and music therapy director of the Morgan Autism Center in San Jose, “Music is inherently therapeutic, especially with autistic kids. I think that adaptive music lessons will always have a great effect.”
Scientists may be baffled, but music teachers are connecting to neurodivergent kids with rhythm.
Kids, parents and teachers are finding out that music is an excellent way for ASD kids to learn to communicate and feel more confident.
This is happening all over the world. A study by graduates at Ewha Women’s University in Seoul, South Korea, says, “For individuals with ASD, music interventions have been found to generate favorable outcomes in social attention, social engagement, initiation of social interaction, and emotional reciprocity.” ScienceDirect.com says, “Rhythm provides therapeutic benefits for autistic children. Rhythm and music help develop social-communicative skills.”
Mark Nielsen, program director of Morgan Autism Center, a San Jose educational institution, says, “The majority of students here are non-verbal, so music is a good opportunity to build their language skills. Music uses a different part of the brain as verbal speech. Sometimes we can see students engage in language through music that they might not through basic verbal communication.”
To gain more understanding of how music can be used to connect with neurodivergent kids, I spent some time with Dirk Stockton, a music mentor who has been playing and teaching professionally for more than 20 years. He is a master drummer and cofounder of Beatbox.com, a rhythm-based music school in Sacramento—and he is also my son.
Stockton teaches all styles and skill levels, with a focus on expression, composition and personal growth. He supports percussion training and performance for local high school drumlines, jazz ensembles, theaters and private studios. “I specialize in neurodivergent studies and love working with unique clients who may not be getting the tailored support they need.
“The behavioral therapy industry gets a lot of work with autistic kids. I almost took a job working for a company doing that as a behavioral therapist, but it was this system where the autistic kids are dehumanized and trained like dogs. They give them a treat when they do the right thing and act ‘normal.’ And when they act neurodivergent, they don’t get their treat,” he says.
“The cool thing about our approach is it’s not about external standards and rewards, it’s about intrinsic standards and rewards,” Stockton explains. “The kid knows their own true path when they find it. When they are walking their path, they know it. Like all of us, when we’re walking our path, we know it.”
Conversation in a Different Dimension
Asked how one can interact with a student who doesn’t talk, Stockton explains, “Autonomy is my number one principle. If the kid won’t do anything, I ask them what we should do. I ask them what I should do. A lot of the time, they’ll run the lesson.”
Mai Abe, of Creative Vibes Music Therapy, says, “We typically expect people who are listening to us maintain eye contact throughout the conversation. An autistic person may be listening to you as intently, but they might be able to focus better if they are not maintaining eye contact.”
In Stockton’s private, in-person lessons, the students join him in a closed room. A camera is in the room, and the parents are next door watching the lesson on a computer screen. “Sometimes the door is open,” Dirk says, “but it’s loud, and drummers do need to consider the neighbors.”
He observes, “Sometimes, for the first couple of lessons, parents may want to come in and stand behind me. Then they realize it’s personal, and they don’t want to disrupt it. Watching it through the monitor in the next room, they get to observe their kid opening up in ways they’ve never seen before.”
Another key to teaching neurodivergent students, he says, is consistency. “A lot of autistic people like repetition and consistent, reliable structure. They want to come back to the same room with the same-colored walls and look at the same music stand on the same side. My students will mention really small details that have changed that make them uncomfortable. … You know what? Everyone’s like that. We all like consistency.”
And as for the suggestion that neurodivergent people crave repetition, Stockton says, “What else runs on repetition? The wheel. The days and nights. The stock market. The planet. Everyone likes cycles. That’s why everyone likes drums.”
Nurturing a Sapling
Stockton approaches his students and their parents without focusing on any specifics about autism. “I never interface with parents on their child’s challenges. I don’t collect any of the reports from the people who have diagnosed them as autistic. I don’t ask the parents where they are on the spectrum or what disorders they have. I have no record of any of their medical stuff. Or any of their psychological stuff. It’s an approach to connecting with people that works well because I don’t try to analyze what makes them autistic. I just work with them on their drums.”
Parent Sara Jukes says, “Two of my kids have severe ADHD. I’m grateful for Dirk, who understands different ways to love and communicate with neurodivergent people.”
Ryan Fuhrman, another parent whose child works with Stockton, says, “The experience with Dirk has been revolutionary for our son. In less than two years Dirk has shaped him from a kid with no musical experience to drumming for his school band.”
Children are not his only students. “I teach all ages, some in their 60s,” Stockton says. “All the people I teach that are older have some history of a teacher who crushed something in them that they’re now nurturing from a sapling. It’s a heroic effort to nurture that sapling that got stepped on. It would be a lot easier if we stopped criticizing new artists so heavily.”
He continues, “From a teacher’s perspective, and from an audience’s perspective, if everyone could give the squeaky clarinet a little slack, music would bloom and get better. Everyone would feel better. It’d be easier for me to teach. Encourage the musicians. If they sound bad, encourage them more. It’s encouragement that will get them there, not discouragement.”
