With the addition of three new babies to my immediate family the topic has arisen in my house as to what music my wife and I will raise our children listening to. I definitely appreciate most forms of music but just don’t have the ability to wrap my arms around songs that most parents would deem child appropriate.

There has been hordes of research done on the subject but a lot of them seem to contradict each other. Some say listen to classical music while others say not to because it is meant for adults and is too complicated for children.

I fall under the schooling that children just want to hear a beat. After all, they just spent that last 9 months listening to nothing but a heartbeat. Watch a child when a song comes on, they don’t care if it’s Barney or Beirut, they just know that there’s a beat there and that they want to dance to it. Children also don’t care about lyrics. Yes, there are songs that will teach children their ABC’s or how to count but so do Feist and The Jackson Five. Fortunately there have been some good steps taken towards a happy medium between parents that still want to rock out but don’t want to give their children nightmares.

I won’t lie though, the real reason that I want to raise my children on Pink Floyd and Damien Rice is that there is nothing cooler in my parental mind then the thought of driving down the road and my child asking me to put the new Muse album in.

And, Yes the picture at the top is of me at about 4 years old. Knowing my Dad I might have been listening to The Bee Gee’s but since it was taken at my grandparents house it’s pretty safe to say that I was listening to jazz.