So, as I said, this blog focuses on my relationship with Christ (the Jesus part of the acronym), Adoption, Music, and Motherhood! So far, I’ve done some devotional writing as God has been giving me lots to grown on!
I’m sensing a shifting of gears, at least for now. As a music therapist/former homeschooler/mom/adoptive mom, I see things in a slightly different light, at times. I’m always trying to see how I can best use my skills in the different “hats” that I wear. As a music therapist, I know the power of music to reach places and do things that nothing else can. As a former homeschooler, I see learning opportunities in weird places. As a mom, I’m always scheduling, planning, preparing, or tweaking SOMEthing! As an adoptive mom, I’m faced with providing needs for a child whose language is sometimes still a barrier and who has a limited vocabulary of words and experiences.
As I pondered things that our new daughter has never learned, and how best to teach them to her, my mind shifted to something I’d learned somewhere along the way about social stories. These are personalized stories about a specific topic, aimed at teaching children life skills. However, as I began to research this method, I was a wee bit disappointed. Now, I am NOT saying that there aren’t good ones out there, but many of the ones I saw were super cheesy! I couldn’t see how a child in the midst of a heated moment, needing to change the trajectory of a situation, would turn their mind to a mimeographed piece of paper with bad clipart pictures and choose to handle that moment more appropriately. As I pondered, I thought, “They might not see a story in that moment, but might they hear a song”? I began to search it out. I asked moms in my adoption groups on Facebook, and many pointed me in the direction of a couple of TV shows, etc. While some of these may be better for toddlers, I just didn’t see that singing (sounded like yelling to me) “I WILL NOT BITE MY FRIENDS” was going to effectively teach my kids the life skills I was aiming for. Other moms said, “Oh yeah, singing really helps! We just make stuff up…and it isn’t very good. Let us know when you put some things together.”
Then, something occurred to me…”Do you have musical ability and training, or don’t you?” Next, I polled these same moms for topics that they want to have a better way to teach their kiddos! I had a few of my own that I wanted to work through. It crossed my mind that I’d want to share these and be able to publish at some point, if I so chose. So, I dug around and found “public domain songs.” These are songs that are older than 1922, and therefore not protected by copyright laws. Parents who need to teach these skills don’t have TIME to spend days learning songs, so what if they already knew the tunes and just had to learn the words to teach to their kids? Over the next week or 2, I wrote 18 songs! I will be sharing some of these over the next few weeks! These songs are great for teaching toddlers/preschoolers, kids with limited language, children with special needs, etc.
Please comment different skills (dressing, manners, accepting no as an answer, using a napkin, taking a bath, brushing teeth, shutting doors behind you, using words, and others) that you would like to see addressed in these songs! Also, if you have character traits that you’d like to be able to teach as a song, please leave your input in the comments! You never know when your idea will bless somebody else in their parenting journey! Stay tuned for songs to come!