Music for Every Heartbeat
Side by Side at the Keys and the Bow: A Family's Volunteer Work in ASD Music Education
A mother and daughter each took on a different role — one teaching violin, one accompanying on piano — for the same student on the autism spectrum. What began as a summer volunteer commitment became a shared lesson in patience, presence, and meeting a child exactly where he is.
YH
9/2/20263 min read
Looking in the Same Direction — A Mother, a Daughter, and One Student Between Them
This summer break, while Nikki was back in Singapore, she connected with Beautiful Mind Charity (BMC) — an organization that nurtures the classical music talents of children with special needs — and became a Teaching Assistant for violin, working with a student on the autism spectrum.
What I didn't expect was this: the very same student she was teaching violin to was also the student I was asked to accompany on piano.
Same child. Two instruments. A mother and a daughter, each standing in front of the same young musician, from a different side of the room.
Nikki's Side of the Room
Nikki has taught violin before, but never quite like this. Teaching a student with ASD asked something different of her than any regular lesson — patience measured differently, instructions broken into smaller pieces, success looking nothing like what she was used to. A phrase played through without stopping was a triumph. Eye contact held for a beat longer than usual was a victory worth quietly celebrating.
She told me she stopped thinking about "teaching" the way she used to. It became less about correcting and more about noticing — noticing what made the student comfortable, what made the bow relax in his hand, what made him want to try the passage one more time. She wasn't just passing on technique. She was learning to meet someone exactly where they were.
The Mother's Side of the Room
And then there was me, at the piano, playing for that same student.
Accompanying a child with ASD is its own quiet education. You learn to follow rather than lead — to listen for the tempo he wants to set, to leave space where space is needed, to let the music breathe around him instead of pulling him into a shape that isn't his. There is no room for ego at the piano in a room like that. There is only the question: how do I support this child so the music truly becomes his?
I found myself, more than once, quietly moved — not by anything dramatic, but by the plain fact of being trusted with someone's music, someone's effort, someone's small and real progress.
What We Found, Looking in the Same Direction
Nikki and I didn't plan any of this. We ended up, by coincidence, serving the same child in the same season — she with the violin, I with the piano. But out of that coincidence came something I don't think either of us anticipated: a shared language between mother and daughter that had nothing to do with the usual conversations we have.
We compared notes after lessons. We noticed the same small breakthroughs from our different vantage points and found we were moved by the same things, for the same reasons. Raising two ordinary teenage daughters is a full-time education in itself — but this was different. This was the two of us, side by side in purpose if not in space, learning together what it means to serve a child who experiences the world differently, and to do it through music.
We took some photos during the lessons, and a short video of one of the rehearsals — small fragments of a summer that turned out to mean far more than either of us expected.
Some of the best conversations between a mother and daughter aren't the ones we sit down and have. They're the ones that happen when we're simply looking in the same direction — toward the same child, the same music, the same quiet hope that he keeps going.
With gratitude to Beautiful Mind Charity for the opportunity to be part of this — and to a student who taught the two of us more than we taught him.
