Music Therapist Helps Children with Autism Find Their Voice

Hayoung Lim, a music therapist

HUNTSVILLE, Texas -- It is almost serendipitous the way that SHSU assistant professor and coordinator of the graduate program in music therapy Hayoung Lim found her calling in her field.
As an undergraduate, Lim was studying cello performance at the Catholic University of Korea in Seoul, South Korea, when a community service assignment that was part of the university’s sophomore curriculum placed her in a facility that cared for people with visual impairments and severe developmental delays.
Lim and her music peers were supposed to work in the kitchen, but when a sociology major asked to change roles because she was having difficulty coping with the severity of the boy with whom she was working, Lim volunteered to sit with the child.
“I went to a room and there was a 10-year-old boy with autism, and he was blind,” Lim said. “The teacher told me he could not do anything, but if you didn’t hold his hand, he would bang his head with his hand. He was physically fine but cognitively couldn’t do anything.”