It’s not the poop, vomit, early rising, late nights, lack of sleep, lack of time, inability to get stuff done, the inability to go wherever whenever or the reduced time for sex. You get acclimated to most of that, and some things preclude other things – consistent lack of sleep makes sleep much more desired than sex (at least for awhile). At least that changes as children grow older. I hope.

What doesn’t change is the daily threat that some horrible, insipid song will weave it’s way into your brain and take away what little peace of mind you have. I thought it was bad in high school when I couldn’t get Ashford & Simpson’s Solid as a Rock out of my head for days. Or Living Colour’s Glamour Boys (I’m fierce!). That was nothing in the face of children’s music that is insipid yet digustingly catchy.

Lately J has been into a cartoon I won’t specify (to save your ears & mind) that has a really bad 80s poppy soundtrack. Not good 80s like a John Hughes film but the really bad pop that someone wrote to please the ears of a muzak-loving executive. Music that’s so inoffensive that it’s just plain offensive. I gird my ears whenever she asks to watch it, hoping that something else will engage my mind soon so the music doesn’t kill me. Thankfully, most of what M & J watch has decent music, like Little Bear (classical-ish but not muzak-y) or Scooby Doo (having the theme song stuck in the head for 2 days wasn’t that bad) or the Muppets.

When M was 3-ish he dug some shows on the Noggin channel, and Lori Berkner was in heavy rotation as the between-shows entertainment. Her thang is catchy kid tunes and they’re cute the first couple of times but they quickly ratchet up in their insidiousness. I only remember snippets of one song, about a couple of guys eating spaghetti. When that song was stuck in my head, I couldn’t decide who I hated more – Ms. Berkner or the two spaghetti eating fools. Aside from driving me crazy, it turned me off from eating spaghetti and gave me horrible thoughts of what I would do if I ever caught them in a dark alley with a pot of spaghetti.

For this threat, prevention is the best method, either by guiding the children towards Good Music or screening the kid stuff. My kids love The Pogues & folk music in general, and M seemed to really dig the Billy Joel & Reverend Horton Heat I was playing yesterday. (Trish was not very pleased about the Reverend reappearing in our lives…) He definitely did not like the Smashing Pumpkins I played in the car last week (he looked like he wanted to die), but hey – you never know what they’ll like. And it’s way better for them to ask for something you actually like.

For kid music, it is imperative that you check the stuff out first. My parents gave M a Mother Goose book & cd that had some truly terrible music. I wish I’d listened to it and thrown it out before M ever saw it. He loved listening to it and we cringed every single time. We’ve tried stuff from the library – one cd of ocean-oriented music was something that we unfortunately were unable to make a copy of (wink wink). Tom Paxton, otoh, is pretty good but not catchy enough that he’s wanted 24/7 – a very, very good find.

I suppose the elephant in the room is Raffy, the Most Popular Blah Blah Blah of the children’s music world. He’s apparently Zeus while Ms. Berkner and her brethren are various lesser gods. I saw apparently because I’ve never heard the guy. I just googled to learn a little about him. He seems like a nice guy but he’s so popular amongst mainstream parents that I think he might be an older, hairier Lori Berkner.

Regardless, all parents need to be vigilant to keep bad music from making them go crazy. Prevention is most definitely better than a cure – especially since the closest thing to a cure is those hangers the Egyptians used to pull a brain out a mummy’s nose.