Always learning

So yesterday I mentioned that Music Therapy is under the Child Life umbrella at CMH. Every so often the Child Life department offers inservices on different topics related to what they do, and as MT is under that, we get to go, too! This week it was all about working with adolescents and how to establish rapport and other things to be aware of when working with them. After talking about the problems and issues specific to adolescents in the hospital, the Child Life Specialists who were leading this one, gave us a lesson on what sort of people and things teens would be talking about. 


The first part was a slide show of a bunch of pictures of actors, actresses, and musicians that adolescents are familiar with and might talk about. They were just pictures with no names, and out of the thirty or so they showed, I am happy to say I knew all but two! And one is local to Kansas City, so he didn't really count. I owe it all to camp and the Juvenile Detention Center.


Then we went through a list of some current slang/lingo that adolescents might use. Some of it was a little disturbing, especially all that concerned drugs. We went over the slang terms not so we can use it and look like total dorks to the teens we will be working with, but so that we will know what they are talking about and be able to bridge that generation gap better, and know what sort of things they are dealing with at school. And we want look entirely stupid when they say some of it.


So it was a very cool and informative inservice. I have not yet in my internship worked with any adolescents one on one or observed that interaction, but I cannot wait until I get to!

Today I got to observe some co-treating with Music Therapy and Physical Therapy, as well as MT with Respiration Therapy. It was pretty cool to see how the other hospital staff values co-treating with Music Therapy.