What's Playing in Your Toddler's Ear?

This year marks the 10th Anniversary of Putumayo Playground, the series of albums from the famed world music compilers created especially for kids. Fans credit it with being part of a revolution in kids' music which, along with artists like Dan Zanes and Laurie Berkner, turned what had been a wasteland of painful ditties into music kids and parents could enjoy together. Indeed, there's some catchy stuff out there, but you won't hear it playing in my car. What's wrong with Bruce Springsteen? If ABBA isn't kids music, what is? Is there anyone out there whose kid doesn't rock out to Flo Rida's "Jump?"

With my first kid, I played kid music in the car, but after three years of "hello, everybody, so glad to see you!" (again! again!), I gathered the remnants of my brain, poured it back into my head and put an end to it. I won't be able to get them to listen to what I want to listen to for long, but for now, I'm in charge, and that means saying "no" to the CD someone gave us featuring Alvin and the Chipmunks.

Do you play kid music for your kids? Did you grow up on "Free to Be You and Me," or did your parents (like mine) subject you to Barry Manilow? Are our kids missing out if we give "Picnic Playground" a miss?

Photograph by Digital Vision/Getty Images.

Tags: kids music, parenting

KJ Dell'Antonia Former Manhattan lawyer and prosecutor, Xxtra Small reviewer, parent of four. Lover of books and bacon.

Comments

Music especially orchestrated

By: Kamil | Mon, 09/28/2009 - 02:34

Music especially orchestrated and produced for children is really a gift for kids. For children its always better to be listening children music than listening to something that's not good for them. I think music from Hanna Montana is really good and so is the other one's release by Disney.

Kids' music

By: vandec | Sun, 07/26/2009 - 22:26

I lasted a couple short years with the "ralph's world" and "wiggleworms" set ... my 9- and nearly-11-year-old sons have been subjected to everything from the Clash to Dave Matthews to Green Day to Radiohead to my latest obsession Kings of Leon. We aslo listen to Radio 1 on Sirius, so we get a little Katy Perry and Lily Allen and whatever else the US will be listening to in six months ...

my parents were too late to be hip (or hippies) but they definitely had their own taste and it was played whether we liked it or not (hard not to love Frank Sinatra of course).

bottom line, kids LOVE hearing good music and it's as much an education as the sappy stuff we've been *told* they need .... and of course, all my kids' friends know this is the house (or carpool) where you can rock out! BONUS!!

The Exception

By: KJ Dell Antonia | Fri, 07/24/2009 - 16:52

Ok, I DO love They Might Be Giants (and Samantha, they have 2 cds to go with the adult ones, and it's nearly impossible to tell the difference!

We generally don't do kid

By: bothisbetter | Fri, 07/24/2009 - 16:17

We generally don't do kid music either, and I never listened to anything but what my parents rocked out to growing up. Which brings up one distinct and colorful song memory from my earliest years: Hall and Oates, "Maneater." It reached its peak in radio plays a few months after my 4th birthday. I absolutely and with all certainty believed this to be a song about a monster.

TMBG

By: Samantha Henig | Fri, 07/24/2009 - 15:13

Wait, They Might Be Giants don't qualify as adult music??

Our music almost exclusively

By: jadelane | Fri, 07/24/2009 - 15:07

We're big fans of They Might Be Giants - No!, and we use a world music lullabies CD as bedtime background music, but other than that, it's our music all the time. I'll gladly sing "Mary Had a Little Lamb" or "Row, Row, Row Your Boat," but our 2-year-old daughter is generally fine with Rilo Kiley and Fiona Apple and The Dismemberment Plan, etc. It's also cute to get her to sing "You got what I need, but you say he's just a friend."

Since she was little, I've played her "Two Blue Lights" by Songs:Ohia and about two months ago, at bedtime, she started requesting it: "daddy sing boo wights?"

You need to mix it up

By: emily.lehnen | Fri, 07/24/2009 - 14:58

I proudly know every lyric to every Barry Mannilow song -- but I also cherish, and still have, my Free to Be book and record. I have a 4-year-old, and after listening to an Elmo CD with her name peppered throughout a few times, we pretended we lost it. She listens to a variety of "grown-up" music, but we also listen to They Might Be Giants, the 80's/90's band who now makes music geared towards kids. Oh, and I got the 2009 Free-2-Be edition on cd for when she gets a little older.....

Play them the good stuff

By: Samantha Henig | Fri, 07/24/2009 - 13:32

I grew up listening to the music my parents love. Some may as well have been kid music: James Taylor's "Mexico" is just as clean and bouncy as "Jelly Man Kelly," and I remember loving the way Leonard Cohen stretched out the line "then we take Berliiiiiiiiiiin," and cracking up in the back of the car at the game my sister and I had invented to accompany the Traveling Wilburys' "Congratulations" of shaking hands every time they repeat the title word (which is a LOT). I enjoyed those albums the way a kid would -- failing to grasp any deeper meaning, or even fully hear the naughty words I didn't understand. But the beauty of growing up on that instead of peppy kid-friendly schlock is that when I sat down with my Napster freshman year of college, it was to those songs I returned. Now I get to experience them with a grown-up appreciation, while still feeling comforted by memories of streching out in the back-back bench seat of our wood-paneled minivan.