Never! NEVER!
I’m gonna buy an ipod shuffle just so I don’t have to learn any baby songs at all. And when children come over, they will be subjected to jazz.
Or techno.
we co-slept so my now 6yo’s room was our room. i hate pastels as a rule so there were never any in the house, and he wore a lot of hand me downs (we couldn’t be picky back then).
as far as music, the only “kid” music we bought was: not for kids only by jerry garcia and david grisman, papa’s dream by los lobos and a woody guthrie one, the name of which is escaping me.
mostly though we listened to our music. now he is most likely to request sublime, ziggy marley, or prince, and he’s just as bright as any other 1st grader.
Only $18.00 per T-shirt?
Wow, what a bargain!
It’s always good to start kids on the Floyd early. 
Er…I wouldn’t go that far. Barney is forbidden in my house. We even fast forward through commercials for anything Barney. Would they have liked it? No doubt. Too bad. They can find something else to like.
So, there’s got to be a balance. If your kid really digs Barney and you can’t stand it…no Barney. Conversely, if you really love Metallica, but it makes the baby shriek…wear headphones or give it up for Lent or something.
Barney’s horrid. So are the Wiggles.
I was on the “No Barney” bandwagon until I saw my #1 son SHUT UP AND SIT DOWN when he was watching it. He would actually be still and quiet for the full length movie. And the Wiggles aren’t so bad. When they were in town, Murray came out to Iota to see The Detroit Cobras. These guys know the rock!
The babies listen to our music. It ain’t so bad. Someone gave us some Baby Mozart: A Little Poopy Music is what we call it. Mozart is in our audio rotation so we don’t see the need to spend an afternoon listening to classical music played poorly on a toy piano and stuffed monkey cymbals. We listen to show tunes in the car.
The only pastels around here were given to us. The nursery is decorated in sepia and indigo with a rather realistic night sky on the ceiling.
And we are, and shall remain Barney and Wiggles free. In the words of my 4 year-old son: “They’re just not smart.”
Heh. Cue the scene from The Royle Family in which the parents sing “No Surprises” by Radiohead to get the baby to sleep. Magic.
I managed to hold to this for 20 months, traditional classical (which is now considered as much baby music as anything else) notwithstanding.
Mother in law finally got a hold of this CD of kids singing international tunes and he just digs that so much that I put it on and suffer. (I don’t like the sound of kids singing. Isn’t that just wretched?)
Generally, kids are probably going to prefer simpler melodies, but you can do that with your own music.
Our kid’s almost 2 and has been reared on lots of Billie Holliday, Ella Fitzgerald, Frank Sinatra, Paul Simon (Graceland is a baby must!), Allison Krauss and Union Station, Barry White, Commodores, Talking Heads (some songs!) Cowboy Junkies, etc. etc.
I hear, though, that the band Cake put out a killer CD for little kids, and I can believe that.
Gah.
Sorry to hijack and ignore OP, winterhawk.
We didn’t do pastels. I did some 'net research about having a red nursery before I went for it, and got some conflicting answers. We finally decided to do neutral above the chair rail and deep red below, just in case.
Just like research that prompts prisons to paint their walls soothing colors, I think you could perhaps prove clinically that babies would tend to be more relaxed in more calming color environments, and stimulated in brighter environments (you see that reflected in the pattern differences between, say, crib bedding and daytime play gyms).
But in terms of how it would affect the child? I just don’t think there’s any way to know.
I believe it’s impossible to isolate independent factors in babyhood and apply them to later development.
That’s why it irritates me to no end when “experts” claim, say, that letting your baby cry when they’re going to sleep will cause trust issues or that sleeping with them will cause them to be overdependent children.
Just no way to know that.
I was born in 1965, and my sister is 15 years older – which means my ‘baby music’ was whatever was on the radio and her own collection of rock records (which my mum ex-jitterbug dance champion also liked). And I never had a nursery type bedroom with all the typical baby accessories – I was a surprise baby, so I started out in my mother’s sewing room, then at age 3 moved into my sister’s room when she moved out to be married; no redecorating or anything.
I turned out reasonably all right, one hopes! Although now I give conference papers on the Kinks, but that could be a sign of a different abnormality.
When I was growing up, my next door neighbour would look after me when my parents were away, and her son and daughter-in-law had a toddler – that kid could sleep only when there was loud rock and roll music right next to his crib, and I do mean ear splitting volume. No clue what that was all about.
On a side note, the* only* thing that could calm down my then hyperactive puppies and knock them right to sleep was to put them in their baskets and play a CD of the Who’s greatest hits on random selection.
Wow. Sorry to hijack, but do you have any available for viewing? I’m a huge Kinks fan…
My kids LOVE David Watts (although I probably play The Jam’s version more than The Kinks’).
Shan’t further the hijack, so I have sent you a wee email on the topic, An Arky.