Music therapy offers highly individual support for children and their relatives. Since worries and fears are distributed very differently depending on the age of the children, music therapy offers playful support to the parents in the first weeks of their for newborns’ or infants’ lives, helping them to deepen their bond to their little ones at this creative and everyday level through humming, singing, using sounds and tone. The “speechlessness” that often prevails makes way to singing and playing. Even the youngest children often react to this change with clear signals – sometimes they let themselves be calmed down, sometimes the infants embark on their first “journeys of discovery” or enter into a vocal dialogue with their environment.

The older the children to be treated become, the more they actively participate in shaping their own music therapy. Musical elements familiar to them through socialization, such as songs, rhymes or movement games, are used as starting points: people sing, clap and play instruments together – and thanks to such everyday activities, the experience of being in hospital becomes less ominous, is tempered by shared music work – all this changes the perception of the hospital situation positively overall.

Often the children also use musical instruments to get very loud: in their game, they become so loud that everyone around them has to cover their ears – it often can’t be loud enough. This game is a great outlet for feelings of fear, powerlessness, pain and anger these children experience.

For our adolescent patients, music therapy can be a way of coming to terms with their disease actively – for example, they can write their own songs or create a playlist together in order to get through critical situations or bad moments better.

Especially in crisis situations, in which relatives often feel they “can’t do anything” – being forced to be patient and wait – music changes the atmosphere for everyone present: children and adults.

The COURAGE Foundation for Chronically Ill Children would like to thank the Hans Thomann Foundation – also on behalf of the music therapist – for the beautiful musical instruments and their significant support of our music therapy. By granting our application, the foundation is has made a great contribution that will have a long-term effect. Their support enables us to further expand the musical offerings and to bring children closer to the healing power of music in an even more diverse way. The new instruments (e.g. singing bowls, ocean drums) enrich our sessions immensely, as they offer our participants new possibilities of expression and creative ways to communicate and process emotions.