Do small children listen to regular music?

In My Humble Opinion
1

There seem to be a lot of commercials and sitcoms showing the whole family singing along to children’s music (and in many cases the joke is that the parents are being driven insane by it).

Now obviously, television doesn’t equal real life, but sometimes you hear parents talking about finally getting to hear adult music again. There also seem to be a couple of versions of CDs of children singing current pop songs on the market.

So, is it common for little kids to only (or mostly) be exposed to music aimed at their age group? If so, when did this trend start?

2

My kids listen to what I’m listening to, and they like it. I have never considered for a second buying them music produced for kids.

3

Mine listen to some real music. My 6 yo boy likes Motorhead’s Ace of Spades, for instance (no intermediary steps for that one!)

But they do tend to prefer kid’s music, just like they prefer animated TV shows. I also think that kids are extremely peer motivated. When they hear kid’s voices, they perk up and want to see what’s going on; if they hear adult voices, they tune it out (I’m sure a lot of parents can ditto me on that one).

4

What do you mean by regular music?

I suppose it depends on what “regular” is in your household. There are still lyrics and songs I’m not too comfortable with my eight and nine year old hearing. Some kids get lots of kids songs (and always have, I remember Sesame Street albums from my childhood) other kids continue to listen to whatever Mom and Dad listen to - which could be head banging heavy metal or folk, some kids are victims of the “baby Einstein” myth, where suddenly the home is filled with Mozart and Bach although Mom and Dad wouldn’t know Vivaldi from Orff in other circumstances. other homes don’t have a lot of music.

My own kids got a little of everything - though, as I said, we still really haven’t had the kids listen closely to the entire music collection.

5

My kids have always listened to “real music.” They have both had their own musical tastes since about age 2/3 – and I often let them choose the radio station we listen to during our drives. My son has a much milder taste in music than I do, preferring Queen to Tool. My daughter could be my twin in her musical tastes, as she runs the gamut from classical to rock to techno to whatever. She and I rarely disagree with which cd goes in the player next.

Funny enough, I am usually the one instigating the children’s songs in the car (if there’s nothing I want to listen to on the radio) – and have my kids so well-trained (or could it be conditioned) that they do clap their hands when I sing “If you’re happy and you know it.” Hahaha, I know, I am “Evil Mom” so be it.

6

We do a bit of both actually.

We listen to our music and the radio (sometimes), as well as having kids tunes (heck I still enjoy some of the kids tunes, in a nostalgic sort of way, so I introduce those to him… Eric Nagler, Sharon Lois and Bram, Fred Penner, Paul Hann, Sesame Street). He has his own cd/tape player in his room, and he will go there and listen to his cd’s or his read along books or we put on music in the living room and just relax as a family (mostly country or Maritime as my Mom doesn’t share my other tastes).

He’s not a fan of punk or rock and roll… last time I was listening to them with him around he covered his ears and told me it was noisy. :stuck_out_tongue:

7

I’ve had two “only children” in many ways - my son is 15 and my daughter 2, and music is one of the biggest shifts I’ve seen in early childhood fashions. When my son was a tot, it was all Barney and Raffi, all the time. Clearly “kid music” with upbeat tempos, bright cheery vocals and not the sort of thing a parent could listen to exclusively without a rifle and a clocktower.

When Amazon wishlisting for my daughter, I found a lot more options. Raffi’s still around, of course, and his current successor is The Laurie Berkner Band, but there are CD’s put out by rock bands - Greenday’s songs have been rewritten into a “children’s CD”. Jerry Garcia and his buddies put out at least one children’s CD before he died. There are CD’s of high quality fully orchestrated classical music - Mozart, Brahms, Beethoven, et al. put out specifically for children. There is a great series of Lullaby CD’s from around the world: one is Brazil, one is Celtic, one is African, etc. - and these are compilations not of “children’s music”, but of real music that is appropriate to fall asleep to.

And beyond the general increase in quality of CD’s marketed at children or parents of infants, there also seems to be a general increase in the notion that it’s okay to just listen to what you like and expose the kids to “grown-up music”. When my son was an infant, he listened to Nine Inch Nails and Depeche Mode and Fugazi right along with me. His favorite song as a preschooler was “Personal Jesus”. I was a young mom, and not “mature” enough to buy the notion that I had to stop listening to what I liked. I took a lot of flak for that from my parents, other parents (who were generally older than I) and even his teachers.

(When he was 10, he came up to me and excitedly asked me if I had heard of “this great new band…Nirvana?” I had to explain that they had actually stopped playing the year before he was born, but I hadn’t really cared for them at the time, so that’s why he didn’t know them.)

But I wasn’t alone, just a bit ahead of my time. The same generation that saw no need to put down the video games after college has also kept control of the stereo, and kids now are more likely than not to be listening to and enjoying “regular music” as well as classic nursery rhymes and " Clean up, clean up, everybody, everywhere…" (Which is the best song ever for programming young minds.)

So, for most kids that I know of today, the answer is “both”. Kids listen to kid music AND regular music - if nowhere else, Raffi is still king of the preschool.

8

I babysat a child of three or four one evening, and we listened to Billy Joel. One of the songs which I recognize but can’t name features a helicopter–she identified the helicopter as what’shisname the helicopter from Thomas the Tank Engine ( I think).

In general, parents are driven insane not by “Children’s music” per se, but by the endless repeats–and small children are generally not shy about requesting their favorite book be read endlessly, their favorite video be played incessently and their favorite songs be played continually. (When my niece was about 2, her mommy enrolled her in a monthly activity club. Came with a craft, a small book, and a CD of music. My niece would always want to hear the newest CD. When the newest one ended and the slightly less new one started playing, she’d demand the “new music, mommy”. Mommy didn’t like this–she’d hoped that she’d get a larger collection of music which was not neccessarily thrilling, but was not horrible, until it was listened to incessently. )

Why do people play Children’s music as opposed to regular music? Marketing of children’s music, for one thing. Desire to protect children (or parent) from inappropriate language (or explaining inappropriate language), etc. Desire to play CDs rather than radio to avoid commercials (Yes, one could choose adult oriented CDs).

But my sister-in-law was amused at Christmas, because her niece was singing Twinkle, Twinkle or something else childish, and her own daughters were singing “Chitty-chitty-Bang Bang” from the Disney movie of the same name.

9

As toddlers, kids music is the preference. Probably because they actually understand the lyrics: you know stuff about animals, cookies, candy, clowns, etc. come to mind.

Once they reach school age and are exposed to “real” music they start to adopt their own tastes. My daughter (10) likes top 10 pop stuff, my son (8) prefers top 10 rock stuff. I prefer classic rock, and at any given time we listen to any and all of the above.

But man, listening to most of their music gives me a headache.

10

Except for the “baby songs” that all little ones learn (The ABC Song, etc.), my kid listened to what I listened to. How could he not? He was small and with me most of the time. He didn’t develop his own taste in music until he was exposed to music outside of our home. He still likes the stuff he was raised on, just as I like the stuff I was raised on.

11

Kids music is a lot more portable now than it used to be. When I was a kid (merely in the 80s) we had kids music on records and that meant our music went as far as the record player could travel. There was no tape deck in the car so we listened to whatever our parents listened to on the radio. I do remember one kids radio program called “Kids America” that played a lot of Dr. Demento type stuff but I don’t remember any “Radio Disney” sort of station. My mom had us listen to a lot of light rock but at the same time we listened to more than our fair share of 60s and 70s music.

I think as the portability of music changed, the amount of “kids music” that kids got exposed to went up a bit. Now it’s much easier to get Raffi in the car :slight_smile:

But also, as some of the parents have said - parents can’t stand to listen to that stuff all of the time, so sharing “adult” or “mainstream” music with kids is probably just as it’s always been for the sake of everyone’s sanity.

12

My kids listen mostly to kids’ music (they’re 6 and 3), mostly because of language concerns. There is a lot of excellent kids’ stuff out there now, Laurie Berkner, Ralph’s World, Dan Zanes, etc., that I don’t mind listening to at all. We skip the “kids singing classic pop songs” albums, which are crap.

My kids are now heavily into The Beatles too, due to a fascination with Yellow Submarine. My 6 year old has the Blue Album (1967-1970) in his room, which he plays to put himself to sleep. That starts with Strawberry Fields Forever. He loves it. As a Beatles fan, that’s cool by me.

13

My kids (aged 4 and 2) listen to kids albums in their playroom where I don’t have to hear it. They love them, and listen to them every day. We sometimes listen to “Kids Stuff” on the satelite radio until I can’t stand it anymore, but their mix is somewhat entertaining to adult ears (unlike the kids albums in the playroom). They also love “A Prairie Home Companion” and the bluegrass that tends to dominate there, and they fell in love with Tchaikovsky over the holidays. My husband likes metal, so they get a dose of that, mostly from “Hair Nation” on the satelite. I’ve never heard them request it, though. I mostly listen to what’s lumped as adult album alternative. They never request that, either.

In the car we have an album called “For the Kids” which is kids music done by mainstream artists. It’s pretty good. For the past several months, the youngest has demanded “Ma nah ma nah” (as performed by Cake) every. single. time. we go anywhere at all for any reason.

So yeah, mostly the kids like music made for children, but it’s not all awful. And sometimes, being the mean, rotten parents we are, we ignore their demands and listen to whatever the grownups what to listen to.

14

AAAAAAHHHHHHHHHhhhhhhh!!! twitches Those are pure, liquid evil!

I still have flashbacks to 6th grade and being made to sing along to a children’s choir singing Michael Jackson’s “Man in the Mirror.”

15

My kids liked kids’ music, but they certainly would listen to my music as well. When they were 3 or 4 years old I was in a chorus that was performing Beethoven’s Ode to Joy, and I did a lot of singing along to the music in the car to help learn it. By the time of the concert, the kids could sing it just as well as I could - in German.

16

My kids pretty much grew up on a combination of classical & Baroque, Heavy Metal, Meatloaf, 80’s hairbands, Alice Cooper, Nursery Rhymes (when they were really young), Celtic, and Folk. They really had a liking for Meatloaf during elementary, but when they got a bit older they started to branch off to their own style such as ©rap & hip-hop.

My oldest held on to the 80’s/90’s era such as Twisted Sister & Weird Al.

My Youngest still adores Alice Cooper & Meatloaf.

When I have grandchildren, I will subject them to the same. And that my friends, is the power of grandparenting =P

17

No kids yet, but as a child I listened to whatever my Mother and Dad listened to, for the most part. I liked Dad’s way better than Mother’s: The Clash, Devo, the B-52’s. Mom listened to a lot of Olivia Newton-John and Bob Denver. And some country. And I never really got into it.

However, I did go through a HUGE Smurf phase, and that included my dad buying me some Smurf records and cassettes. He actually seemed to like it more than I did, most of the time.

I was given my own child-size (cheapie, plastic) record player at one point, and for Christmas I got a bunch of Disney records… I played them as backround noise, but I would sneak out sometimes and steal Dad’s records. I remember liking the Beatles; mainly because I could find them by the green apple label - cut in half on one side.

My lil’ bro listened to whatever I listened to. He liked Yello’s *Oh Yeah * - there was a part in it he likened to the sound of “someone chopping pickles”. Also, the part where there’s a guy screaming? He thought that was the *Impossible Mission * guy (C64 game, for all you non-C64-geeks) - the scream he made when he fell through a hole.

18

My daughter, 5, listens to what I listen to and also has a knack for lyrics. She can often be found playing in her room and singing anything from “Blackbird” to Alanis Morissette, with no accompaniment. She likes catchy stuff best, like the Numa Numa song and Barbie Girl by Aqua.

I remember listening to my mom’s stuff when I was a child as well.

19

I remember my 3-year old niece singing “Look down, look down, don’t look him in the eye” from Les Mis. She loved that musical. Another niece and nephew loved Billy Joel and the '50’s music soundtrack from Stand By Me. We never listened to much kids music, although James Tayolr and Carly Simon had a good kid’s album (In Harmony), and Kenny Loggins kids album is good.

StG

20

When I got n MP3 player, my kids (then 7 and 5) astounded me by instructing me what to download. Now they share an MP3 player – it has two outlets.

I sing in a gospel choir so they have a fair bit of black gospel on there – like everybody else, kids like what they know. Youngest (now 6) likes techno a lot and Eldest (8) is fond of pop music. They also have a fair number of stories available in that format. Currently it also has quite a few christmas carols I haven’t gotten around to deleting.

The kids music they heard came mostly from school.