Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Piano Teachers Forum Autistic Student - please help!

Stephanie, nothing involving music education specifically comes to mind. Carol Gray's "Social Stories" can be very useful, and she describes a methodology for creating your own social stories that you could perhaps adapt to a piano lesson context. Essentially you draw a comic book type story where you outline the expected behavior in a given context, e.g., you could have a "going to McDonald's" social story where you show a customer standing politely in line, giving his order, paying for the food, taking his food, eating at a table, throwing the trash away, etc. It's a way of communicating all the routines of daily life that we soak up unconsciously and take for granted but that many people with autism find mystifying.

Depending on your artistic talents, it could be easy/fun to adapt this procedure to piano lessons, or it could be just too much effort.

mbrown,

What do you mean by hand over hand?

Would anyone else know?

I have to agree with Monica. Students that I have had where I have suspected a disorder such as autism, did not like to be touched. They even had a hard time with the feel of the keys on their fingers.

Very difficult situation for a piano teacher.

I am so impressed with MBrown's hard work in beginning to figure out avenues by which to teach this child.

I am curious: whose idea was it for the child to take piano lessons? Hers? Her parent's? Some other educator or resource person? I think this would make a difference in the child's degree of application and interest.

I have known autistic children who are terrified by sudden sounds and others who will do nothing else but play the piano. These end up being totally different teaching situations. I would probably start just with showing the child that pushing a key gently makes a soft sound and judging my direction from her response.

The piano can also be visually very overwhelming -- all those keys, all those nearly-repetitive patterns. For example, I think that "finding twos" on the keyboard might be daunting. Is B/C (two whites with two blacks neighboring) a two? Then E/F is probably a two also -- but what about G/A, which has two whites with two blacks neighboring but with one in the middle? A two, but a different kind? I'm not even going to guess about F/G, which is clearly not symmetric -- but is the teacher thinking only about patterns involving symmetry?

I guess my point is that an idea which might seem simple to one person can be absolutely bewildering to another, and a sensation which feels good to one person can be appealing or terrifying to someone else.

If I were in this teaching situation I would be looking for lots of information, from people who actually know the child, about what the purpose of piano lessons for her was supposed to be.

P.S. I do wonder about the validity of research which says that "starting special-needs children with pre-school materials is a good idea" (I hope that quotation is accurate, it's intended to be). In my experience, you can't generalize about "special-needs children": each one is different and requires a fairly individual teaching strategy. I don't mean to move the thread to a non-piano topic, but there's a lot more to this question than any of us can address here, not knowing the particular child.

(Disclaimer: musician, R.N., and special-needs mom.)

Gyro, I believe your "normal brain in a defective body" theory would suit, say, Stephen Hawking's condition better than people in the severe autistic spectrum.

ah, Steven Hawking. He just completed a trip on the Vomit Comet, which is as close to outer space as he'll ever get while in this world. He loved the experience of weightlessness.

Yeah, this is clearly OT, but what the heck.

The student in the television program cannot
utter a single word and can't type without
physical assistance, so, unable to respond
to an oral examination, it's safe for
detractors to say she's retarded and
not really doing the work. But for
this to be true would require a conspiracy
of unreasonable proportions: the mentor
is secretly a history grad who keeps up with
all the obscure history courses the student takes
so that she can guide the student's hand
on the keyboard when the professor
grills her in class; the mentor, who
takes no notes in class, memorizes
the lectures and then writes the student's
papers for her; all of the student's numerous
professors are also in on it; the mentor
who takes the student to the racetrack
to bet on horses is also in on it and
picks the races for her; and so forth.

My "philosophy" (if you could call it that) of teaching students with special needs is pretty much the same as teaching "typical" students: everyone is different. Some students might respond well to age-appropriate materials, some might not. The series I use most often with my "typical" students is Piano Adventures. With my autistic students I usually start with Alfred (the regular course, not the early beginner). IMO these books use the visual element to best effect. I only use the lesson book. The picture schedule idea is great -- just be sure you stick with it "to the letter" because the student certainly will! I use social stories with my son, and I have a preprinted one I use for students but to be perfectly honest with my own time challenges I don't write new ones for students. Most of my students see therapists and I have found them to be very willing to address specific problems with the student.

Oh yes- one more thing. I recently found two Alfred notespellers that I like. One involves coloring pictures, the other just patterns. Two of my students really like the pattern one. I don't usually use notespellers but my ASD students seem to like them.

Thanks for the support, folks.

I have a 20 year old autistic son who is moderate to severe. He is totally non verbal. I have been involved in this for almost 18 years, before anyone even spoke of autism. And much of the info here is off base and inaccurate. Especially Gyro...

Mark737,

Then what is the answer? Is there one?

How does a piano teacher instruct an autistic student successfully. Can one?

You say that your son is totally non-verbal. Does this mean he might be able to learn music through listening and/then demonstration only. Not bothering with verbal instruction or music books.

My heart goes out to you. I am truly interested in finding a way. It to me seems that everyone is different, but when you have autism thrown in as well, what does or can a teacher do to succeed?

Autism traits and abilities cover a huge spectrum, My son could never play the piano as sad as it is to admit.

It sounds like the student you have can learn, and without knowing him/her I would be only guessing. I just hope the parents don't think just because the child is autistic that he/she is a savant, which is actually extremely rare.

Some traits that the autistic have are that they are very visual and take clues via vision. They also love structure as in doing thinks in a certain order.

The parents probably can help you the most of course.

Let us know how you make out. You probably can really make a difference in this child...

Mark 737,

Thank you for your reply.

Sorry for all the questions, hope you don't mind.

And by the way to make it clear mbrown is the original poster asking the original question. Don't mean to hi-jack.
Although, I'm sure this discussion will help us all.

I too have experienced teaching or trying to teach autistic children, that is why I am curious and why I am asking these questions.

When you say clues via vision, could this mean teaching by rote? Or demonstration? Could the structure you are talking about be for example playing one note in a specific rhythm and repeating it until the rhythm and technique (via vision) is mastered and then learning the next note, same way, etc, building upon small goals?

Or do you mean visual as learning from a book?

Thank you.

Demonstrations will be very usefully as well as using a book. Verbal instruction can be difficult since they sometimes process information differently. Especially abstract information. Again, it truly depends on the child's handicap severity. With my son we use lots of hand signals and sign language.


The structure I speak of has more to do with a certain routine. These children seem to love an organized approach and to maintain a specific pattern in their activities. When you abruptly change things on them they can get upset.

I would imagine that scales which run in distinct patterns and can be demoed visually very well could be a great way to start.

I share that concern, and I think one of the most important things mbrown can do is have a long chat with the parents about their goals and expectations regarding piano for their child. I got the feeling that mbrown was feeling frustrated because the lesson(s) were progressing slowly. But it could be that the parents are not worried about the rate of progress at all and simply want their child to have the experience of lessons. I know that I have enrolled my son in a plethora of activities, some meeting with more success than others, not because I am expecting him to excel in all or even any of them but because I am trying to give him as "normal" an upbringing as possible.

I agree, though it has been shown that the occurrence of savants is much more likely among autistic population than the general one. This short article estimates 10% of autistic savants vs. less than 1% of savants in the general population.

Check out this amazing example of an autistic man with photographic memory:

http://break.com/index/autistic-man-draws-near-perfect-panorama=of-rome.html

Greetings,I see lots of interest in teaching autistic children. I have been doing this for three years and have developed a curriculum targeted to that population. It is focused on playing by ear though it introduces reading gradually through a proto-reading system. You can check it out at www.AutisticPianoEXpress.com. I am also interested in comparing ideas with anyone else who is teaching special needs kids or adults. No doubt there are many and varied approaches to this work.

Nice to meet you all,

Welcome to the forum, Alex. Any relation to PW member John Citron, by any chance?

I've only had a chance to look briefly at your website, but your approach sounds intriguing. My son has been asking for piano lessons, but I'm not convinced he's got the motivation to sit down and concentrate for a normal lesson. I've been dabbling with him a little, using a John Thompson beginner book we had sitting around. He's usually ready to stop and do something else after 5 or 10 minutes. So your teach at home curriculum that I could do in short spurts sounds promising. I'll look closely at your materials this weekend.

This does look very interesting. I love the 2-track idea for repeats! I will look over it more over the holiday weekend.

wow, this is really interesting. I have not had a lot of experience in teaching autistic students myself but I know there are a couple coming up in the school.. thanks for all the info here guys.