Except I have a horrible singing voice. You'd think I'd be safe in my own house but my hubby likes to tease. Though hubby doesn't have a great singing voice either. Of course everyone sings for Sunday mass. In our house the world runs on a song. Isn't the saying "whistle while you work"? For us it's more hum (or sing), since I can barely whistle at all. If a baby is fussy, how is it that a monophonic lullaby will calm them. Cranky, crabby, fighting kids? Break out the music and dance, it will get some fidgets out and get them laughing.
Most of all we use songs to learn things. We have learned everything hard to a song. Even a 2 year old can learn their phone number when set to music. 3 year olds move onto their address. Forget Roy G Biv, a rap works too. The states in the US? No problem. Preamble to the constitution. Parts of a cell. Bones in the body. My personal favorite is the clean up song. We actually have 2 of those, one we learned from Barney over 10 years ago, the other we learned from Gymboree play classes. Though the girls even sold Girl Scout cookies to song this weekend. "Do a little dance, eat a little cookie. Get down tonight, buy some cookies tonight". I am not even sure if they know the real lyrics to that song.
Of course there is music for fun too. You can't beat watching A2, J4 and S6 doing the Cha Cha Slide. 10 years ago we only listened to educational or kids cassettes in the car. We had songs that taught nursery rhymes, shapes, days in a week, months of the year. Then I upgraded to a minivan with a CD player but before I could collect everything on CD my toddler broke the CD player.
So now we listen to country music. Though I guess those songs aren't as kid friendly. You realize this when your 4 year old wants to know what Tequila is. A drink? Oh, can Kool Aid make my clothes fall off too? 6 years later she taught her toddler sister the word Tequila, we're still trying to teach her that Sprite is not Tequila. Or a year later when she wanted to know what 4 letter word the 4 year old in the song said. This past summer I couldn't get the toddler to take a nap in the car because I had J4, S6, B11 and their cousin all singing "rain is a good thing" at the top of their lungs. I doubt it's a good thing to teach them "don't give a damn" either.
I am sure there are some lessons though. What about "never let your praying knees get lazy"? I'm almost positive my genius of a teen could use the lesson "don't outsmart your common sense". Besides, it could be worse. We don't listen to "I like big buts..." or "it's getting hot in here, so take off all your clothes". Heck, they even thought the lyrics were "if you love your baby better put a sling on 'em" until they saw the Chippettes movie. I tried switching to the Christian station but the songs just aren't as catchy.
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