"Our four year old daughter, who as ASD including speech and social delay, walked into her first music therapy session with Alison and felt immediately comfortable. It was clean after one session that Alison knew how to tailor the therapy to our child's exact needs. within one month of therapy, we sae a huge difference in our child. She was speaking more clearly, and her confidence in front of others seemed to improve as well. Our daughter looks forward to seeing Alison every week and after most sessions she doesn't;t want to leave! We are so glad to have found therapy that could be fun for our child, with such great results!!"

-Allison and Mark

"My son, Matthew is 4 years old and on the Autism Spectrum. Ali has now been working with him for a year, and she has helped him tremendously by increasing his expressive language and attention span through an avenue that he loves; music. She has a gift with children. Matthew feels so secure and confident with her, and he continues to discover new skills that he generalizes at school and at home. She is a kew part to his continued development, and I would highly recommend her to anyone looking to help their child in a positive, fun and concrete way!"

-Jill

"Last year, in what seemed a very unfortunate turn of events, our 12-year-old son was not allowed into a “regular class.” He had difficulty doing the work in his primary school because of non-compliance (difficult behaviour). He is a bright kid and interested in others but was completely socially excluded in his school. We were very involved in socializing programs and groups where he was keen and popular in the group but nothing seemed to improve his ability to integrate at school.

To our surprise, after just a few weeks in a specialized class he had his first friend. He was trying to hang around with a cool group and was clearly very happy to feel like he was a part of a social group. A supportive, knowledgeable group of educators had done in two weeks what we had been unable to do in years – provide him with the inner confidence to attempt to socialize.

This experience made us start to think that maybe our son’s success and happiness was not dependant on didactic socializing interventions. We knew the evidence didn’t show that kids actually improve socializing skills with these interventions but we didn’t know what else to try. After this experience, we realized that what he needed was to feel good about himself, and with that he could do the socializing work on his own.

With this experience in hand, and as he is back in a “regular class” school doing academically very well, we decided to look more closely at what his extracurricular time would be spend doing. He has interests and excels in things and we started to think about activities where he could work on these in a caring, positive environment. This is what led us to Westmount Music Therapy and it has been an incredibly rewarding decision. Our son is now enjoying and feeling fabulous about himself through his success with Alison and the evolution of his musical abilities and the other social possibilities that she has arranged for him. Not only does she listen to him and encourage him – she has found a number of opportunities for him outside of the therapy where he is now socializing and using his music to interact socially. And most importantly, he loves it, he feels great about himself and he heads off to high school each week with a confidence and ‘joie de vivre’ that helps him to deal positively with whatever happens at school.

The therapy sessions and the interest in our son shown by Alison is exceptional and we would recommend it for any child with difficulty socializing or other limitations where building their self confidence is what they need most to succeed."

-Anonymous