March is Child Life Month, but at Maimonides Children’s Hospital in Borough Park, the celebration sounds less like a ceremony and more like a ukulele echoing through the pediatric unit.
At Maimonides Children’s Hospital — the only dedicated children’s hospital in Brooklyn, with the largest pediatric and neonatal intensive care units and the only pediatric trauma center in the borough — Child Life Services offers a year-round child life, creative arts and education program aimed at helping young patients and their families cope with the fear and anxiety of hospitalization, illness and medical procedures.
Alexis Ellis, child life specialist and manager of Child Life Services at Maimonides, told Brooklyn Paper that the program’s team of two full-time child life specialists, one full-time art therapist, social workers and consulting psychiatrists and psychologists aims to make hospital stays less stressful for young patients and their families.
“Kids who understand why they’re here in the hospital are more compliant, and they have less stress because they know what’s going on,” Ellis explained. “We also do support for families, whether that be bereavement, new diagnosis, just kind of helping support the whole family and the patient while they’re here in the hospital.”
In addition to creative art therapies, procedural preparation and support, therapeutic play and bereavement services, the program provides special entertainment such as live music.
Once a week, Spencer Grubbe, a live music specialist with JoyRX Children’s Cancer Association, an organization that provides free music, mentorship and nature experiences to seriously ill children, visits Maimonides’ 36-bed pediatric inpatient unit, which treats patients from birth to age 18 with acute and chronic conditions such as diabetes, cancer, blood disorders and trauma.
Ellis said the music entertainment gives children and their families a sense of normalcy and autonomy because participation is voluntary.
“[The children] get a few choices from this experience that they don’t normally get in the hospital experience, because it’s normally the doctors telling you, ‘This is what you have to do. You need to take this medicine. You need to do this. You need the shot.’ A lot of things that they need to do to get better, which make kids feel scared and out of control,” Ellis said. “It really is such a great distraction from the everyday, and even for the staff, the staff loves to hear the kids having a good time and singing and not going through something that’s scary or stressful for the patients.”
Grubbe, who has a master’s degree in music theory and composition from NYU, visits five hospitals in New York City during the week, including Maimonides on Wednesdays, making rounds through the pediatric unit with his ukulele — because it’s the easiest instrument to carry — but he also brings extra instruments, such as a guitar and keyboard, in case kids want to join the jam session.
Grubbe grew up listening to metal but tries to stay up to date by listening to a variety of music, given the wide range of genres the children enjoy. He mostly plays by request, and the song choices range from nursery rhymes and Disney songs to heavy metal bands such as Metallica and Megadeth, he told Brooklyn Paper.
“Sometimes they’ll hit me with a request from 20 years ago. A couple of weeks ago, one [patient] was requesting [songs], like ‘Call Me Maybe,’ and Justin Bieber’s ‘Baby.’ Songs from, I think, definitely, before he was alive. And we were like, ‘Oh my gosh, I can’t believe you know this song,’” Grubbe shared. “This job has really encouraged me to listen to lots of different kinds of music, listen to newer music that’s coming out. If there are any artists that are super popular right now, or like kids’ movies that come out, like ‘KPop Demon Hunter.”
The Wednesday jam sessions included renditions of the classic children’s song “Wheels on the Bus,” oldies such as “Here Comes the Sun” by the Beatles, and more contemporary tunes like “Put Your Records On.”
Twelve-year-old Hunter, who has been a patient at Maimonides for two weeks, joined Grubbe for a personal concert in the pediatric unit’s playroom and requested songs by Linkin Park — his favorite band — and Metallica.
The youngest of four — Hunter has three older sisters — loves sports and hopes to learn the drums. He was an attentive and appreciative audience as he listened to Grubbe perform “One Step Closer” and Metallica’s “Enter Sandman.”
“It was awesome and fun,” Hunter proclaimed.
Seeing the children light up when they hear him play is fulfilling, Grubbe said.
“The hospital can be really overwhelming, and kids usually don’t get a lot of agency when they’re here. They feel like they’re rushed from one thing to the next. There are always people coming in, and so it’s always fun to be somebody who is just coming into the room to play some music, right? I’m not here to do any medical stuff; just give them some music service. And usually it’s something they request and want to hear, and they really like that. So it means a lot.”
