In another venue someone asked if anyone else’s child on the autism spectrum hated to hear their mother sing.<\/p>\n
My answer was yes: when our son was pre-verbal, he didn’t much like singing at all (with the exception of a lullaby I’d made up for him early on) but he did like music…until the 18 months when he didn’t.\u00a0\u00a0 For about two years I was choir director for a very small church’s very small choir, and I could not have him in the church while we rehearsed–he’d scream the whole time.<\/p>\n
Once he began to talk (a process that took years to achieve) he complained about singing.\u00a0 He liked music–he liked to have me play the piano, and began playing himself very early–but singing, especially in groups, seemed almost to hurt him. \u00a0 (His early ability on the piano, combined with being nonverbal, made us consider if he might be a musical savant.\u00a0 Not many preschoolers will start playing along with very complex difficult classical music.)<\/p>\n
Though he gradually came to accept some vocal music, with a single (very good) singer,\u00a0 things changed again for an 18 month period.\u00a0\u00a0 Suddenly (as in, within one week) he could not stand any music at all, even music he had enjoyed before.\u00a0\u00a0 Music in the mall, music in a restaurant, music on the radio or TV–none of it.\u00a0\u00a0 His language\u00a0 at this stage was what is called “right-brain”–the way people speak who have had damage to their left-brain auditory processor,\u00a0 the main language center (Broca’s area.)\u00a0 Stilted and downright peculiar syntax, little emotional expression, etc. \u00a0\u00a0 And music is processed (for most people) mostly in the right-brain auditory processor.\u00a0 Were the two interfering when both words and music came in together?<\/p>\n
I was watching the winter Olympics (in France that year) and ice dancing (or pair skating–I have trouble telling the difference);\u00a0 a pair were skating to music I’ve known well since I was six.\u00a0\u00a0 The announcer was talking over the music; that didn’t bother me.\u00a0\u00a0 Then the phone rang.\u00a0 I put the phone to my right ear, and a friend began a conversation…and instantly,\u00a0 both the music and the announcer’s voice (which then were coming in my uncovered left ear)\u00a0 became unintelligible, ugly, and even painful.\u00a0\u00a0 I could not understand what the announcer said; I could not hear the music as music–it turned into loud (louder than it had seemed before)\u00a0 ugly, scary, horrible sounds that made no sense.<\/p>\n
I knew instantly that I was experiencing what our son experienced.\u00a0\u00a0 No wonder he said “Loud dangerous music!” ….that’s exactly what it seemed like to me–an adult, not autistic, familiar with the music and easily able\u00a0 to handle complex language.\u00a0 What I didn’t know was that he was in the process of shifting from right-brain to left-brain language…his syntax was about to alter significantly and become more understandable.<\/p>\n
In the next 12-18 months,\u00a0 his verbal language improved in all areas: the amount he spoke, the way he spoke, the increasing expressiveness (exaggerated at first) of his speech, etc.\u00a0\u00a0 And gradually, his tolerance for music returned…first for piano, then for other instrumental, and finally (and permanently) for singing.<\/p>\n
I suspect (we didn’t have serial PET scans done so we can’t be sure) that the previously nonfunctional or barely functional Broca’s area finally “connected” with the right auditory processor he’d been struggling with–and in the period where the two were competing over which would handle which sounds, music in general and vocal music in particular did in fact “collide” and create “loud dangerous music.”<\/p>\n
In this same period, he quit playing the piano as much (and finally, at all)\u00a0 and showed much more interest in language itself.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 His last use of the piano was to express emotion (playing “dark brown notes” when he was unhappy, and “bright yellow notes” when he was happy…and he hasn’t touched the piano for several years.<\/p>\n
Later we discovered another unusual factor: he has absolute pitch.\u00a0 Amateur singers like me are not always pitch perfect (we tend to come at a pitch tangentially, arriving there–if we ever do–after a period of off-pitch “noise.”)\u00a0\u00a0 For a someone\u00a0 with absolute pitch, someone singing just off (and therefore not matching the piano or other accompaniment) isn’t just mildly annoying–it’s painful.\u00a0\u00a0 (The piano needs tuning–so this may be another reason he’s lost interest in playing it.)<\/p>\n
He loves music,\u00a0 has a big CD collection and plays them a lot, loves going to concerts, including choral concerts,\u00a0 will try to sing with the tenor section in the “sing-along Messiah” concerts we’ve gone to, now tries to sing hymns in church…but has no interest (apparently) in learning music or performing, though both of us sing in choirs.\u00a0\u00a0 He can discuss\u00a0 the emotional tone of the music, and the quality of the performance….that absolute pitch is always there and though he’s learned to hold the critique for afterwards, he’s certainly noticing if someone sings\u00a0 or plays off-pitch.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In another venue someone asked if anyone else’s child on the autism spectrum hated to hear their mother sing. My answer was yes: when our son was pre-verbal, he didn’t much like singing at all (with the exception of a lullaby I’d made up for him early on) but he did like music…until the 18 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,45,46],"tags":[3,13,33,5,7],"class_list":["post-71","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life-on-the-spectrum","category-music","category-sensory-processing","tag-autism","tag-communication","tag-language","tag-music","tag-sensory-processing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.speedofdark-thebook.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.speedofdark-thebook.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.speedofdark-thebook.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.speedofdark-thebook.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.speedofdark-thebook.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=71"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.speedofdark-thebook.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":72,"href":"http:\/\/www.speedofdark-thebook.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71\/revisions\/72"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.speedofdark-thebook.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=71"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.speedofdark-thebook.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=71"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.speedofdark-thebook.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=71"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}