by Claudia Boyd-Barrett posted in Parenting

Enrolling kids with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in music therapy won?t improve their social skills, according to the results of a large clinical trial.
The disappointing finding, published this month in the Journal of the American Medical Association, is based on a study involving more than 350 children ages 4 through 7 in the U.S., Australia, the U.K., Israel, Brazil, Italy, Korea, Norway and Austria. During the trial, the children all received standard care for autism available in their region. In addition, half of the children received one-on-one music therapy.
After 5 months of therapy, the children in the music therapy group scored similarly on social skills tests to children who didn?t receive music therapy, the researchers found. Music therapy involves a trained professional helping children create music spontaneously by singing or playing an instrument. The U.S. has about 7,000 music therapists, according to the study.

So should you disregard music therapy as an option if you have an autistic child"
Not necessarily. To begin with, this study wasn?t perfect. Calculating the effectiveness of a therapy is more difficult than figuring out how well a drug works because therapy is less precise and may vary depending on the therapist and recipient. Other research has found music therapy benefits kids with autism, although these studies are often smaller and of lesser quality.
Even if music therapy doesn?t improve autis...