Teaching Kids Hymns

So for a while I have wanted to teach my kids hymns. The service we go to at church is wonderful and they are getting plenty of contemporary praise music there and on the radio, but something about the hymns make me happy. Maybe it is all the wonderful theology in them or maybe it just reminds me of our old church, but I love them.

I have Joni Eareckson Tada's Hymns for a Kid's Heart (we only have the first book, but plan to get the rest soon!) which we LOVE but I was wondering if there were other resources out there? Do you teach your kids hymns? If so, how?

Thanks!

My comments have not been working right for the last few days so I just found all the advice you all sent for my strong willed baby today! Thank you for all your encouragement and suggestions! We will definitely be taking them to heart and working through.....but praise God, the last week has been so much easier than the week before. We still have a lot of work to do but I think she was definitely testing me for a few hard days. I'll try and post our camping pictures tomorrow...we had to cut the trip a bit short because of the rain but we had a lot of fun.

Advice for a Mommy with a strong willed child

Ok, well this is funny and also super frustrating.....I try not to laugh and try not to get mad all at the same time. I normally don't blog about my parenting problems but in an attempt to make this blog more authentic and really show all the sides of parenting here I go.......

I have hit a wall. After 5 years of preschool teaching and 3 years of being a mommy I have finally hit my wall. I love my sweet spunky daughter so much and she is an incredible little person but she is driving me crazy! She is so strong willed that I don't even know how to discipline her. Let me begin with some background since I did not think that an almost 2 year old could even be this difficult when it comes to her will.

Olivia is 21 months old and is extremely smart. Everyone who knows her, including her pediatrician and international adoption specialist doctor, think that she is at least 6 months older. She speaks with hundreds of words, maybe even thousands, and in full complete sentences. I can tell her to go upstairs and find 3 different objects that are in three different rooms without telling her where anything is and she will come back down with all of them. She understands everything I say and can even hold a great conversation about it. She pretty much operates at almost the same level as her 3 year old brother for the most part.

So we have been battling it out. On Wednesday it started with her hitting Jackson. After a two minute time out (she sits in the same room that we are in but has to face the wall) she needed to say I am sorry to Jackson and say no hitting to me. This happens ALL THE TIME at our house and she knows the drill, say your sorry and say no hitting. Well, she flat out refused. She didn't speak for 3 1/2 hours. After several hours of many different discipline tactics (long time outs, isolation in her crib, some not-so-great yelling, etc.), I just decided to just put her down for her nap. The kid would rather sit at the wall staring for hours than just say I'm sorry. I don't even understand it.

So then at 7:30 that night we were at Half Priced Books and she wanted a book. I of course said no and then I caved and said if she could apologize and say no hitting she could have one. So as we checked out she caved, and promptly said what she needed to along with book please? So yeah, I bribed my kid.

And Parent of The Year goes to..........

So every day since she has been pulling this shenanigan. She has refused to say please, yes ma'am and all sorts of things once each day. I decided not to wait it out. She just gets a consequence and it is over. Yesterday she lost her privilege to wear her minnie mouse necklace and lost reading books before bed. Tonight she lost bath time and she is wearing her jacket to bed. Um yeah, she is refusing to say jacket off please. She will just say jacket off. She normally actually says and we usually require, "May I jacket off please," but I am just going for a please at this point. It's just a zip up hoodie over a t-shirt so she isn't going to get hot or anything.....although maybe getting hot would make her just say please......well who knows?

So I need your advice.....Am I doing this all wrong? She desperately wants to hold the power and I do give her a few choices throughout the day and she is normally a very happy kid. I just don't know where she went. Maybe I need to take away her choices until she can prove to me that she can handle the freedom. I dunno, I am at a loss.


I wrote this a few days ago and I can say that it is getting better.....I have also purchased the strong willed child by James Dobson:) Although getting around to reading it would involve having time to myself:)