WHAT YOUR KID’S PLAYLIST WILL TELL YOU

Hello my lovely readers! As you may know from reading about my parenting journey, I am hesitant to give much parenting advice. Most of what I know I have learned by doing it wrong. However, I do have some words of wisdom for you about what your kid’s musical playlists can tell you. If you are struggling with the music your kid is listening to, I’ve got you.

As a child, I went to a verrrrry conservative private Christian school where everything we read, watched on tv or listened to on our walkmans came under heavy scrutiny. Our school even had an official “blacklist” for music that we could not (be caught) listening to. In the assembling of this list, Amy Grant’s Straight Ahead album was blacklisted because she was depicted without shoes in one of the album’s liner note pics. That’s right, I said AMY GRANT WAS BLACKLISTED FOR HAVING FEET THAT WE COULD SEE. I say this to emphasize the fact that I am no stranger to having my own playlist censored. At school we were taught that listening to rock and roll would surely contaminate and disqualify us.

Don’t worry, I’m over it. My parents and I came to our senses and left that fearful approach to music behind.  It was absurd and religious and full of fear. I listen to as much or more rock and roll than most women my age and I haven’t 1) left my faith  2) become promiscuous or 3) started doing drugs. I’m fully integrated. 

As I have bumbled through the policing of my own children’s playlists in this digital, all-access age, I will share what I have discovered. These truths have given me a mixture of peace, connection and vigilance, which is what seems to encapsulate most of my parenting approaches of late.

MUSIC IS AN INROAD TO YOUR CHILD’S WORLD Kids have a soundtrack for their lives these days. My kids listen to music in the shower, on the way to school, in some classes, when they are driving, while they do their homework and even to put themselves to sleep at night. They have curated playlists (remember mixtapes?) that they cue up for specific reasons, occasions and feelings. We can be upset about this digital intrusion and try to control it or we can see it for what it is – a way to know our child. Music is moving them through their days and you have the perfect opportunity to know your child by listening. Let them be the DJ in the car, let them stream to the speaker in the living room. Listen to their playlists. Here’s what you might discover….

SAD SONGS SAY SO MUCH Thanks for that, Elton. I am, by nature, a really happy person. I don’t mope around a bunch, indulging my negative emotions. As a matter of fact and concern, I can sometimes have a really hard time connecting to or allowing myself to feel sadness. Sadness is an important part of the human experience and, as I have learned in the last 8 years, a really imperative emotion. Immersing myself in a perfectly sad song gives me permission to allow sadness to surface so I can move through it. I need sad songs. If your kid’s playlist is heavily populated with songs that make you want to leap forth from a cliff and you are seriously concerned that your child might be sinking, enter on in. You could start by saying, “Wow, that song moves me so much! Could you play it again so I could hear the lyrics?” or “Woah, this song really makes me feel some stuff, what does it mean to you?” You may get an answer or you may not. Either way, you will have given your child permission to sit with sadness without shame.

Here’s the first sad song I connected with as a teenager. I played it constantly.

Here’s another one I still love.

SO DO ANGRY SONGS Exactly which expressions of anger are allowed in your home? I have struggled to find ways of expressing anger to be ok for me and also for my kids. I have marched a rightfully angry child up to a punching bag and told him not to come home until he got it all out. I have rolled down the windows and given my kid permission to yell cuss words out the window when I saw he was about to explode with rage. Anger is allowed. So why would I throw a fit when my angry, heartbroken child wants to play an angry, heartbroken song with the f-word and the b-word in my presence? Am I too holy for that anger? Can I sit with him in his anger, get over my cuss word paranoia and just let it be ok? Who does it hurt? Nobody, that’s who. It means my child is ok letting me into his experience and that, my lovely readers, is a straight-up privilege.

MUSIC = TRIBE It’s human nature to want to belong to a tribe, we are built for it. If you have your people, even in the 8th grade, you are set. A lot of the music that our kids discover, they will find through their peers. I discovered the importance of this connection on my way to a birthday party with a car full of 8th grade boys. My son was the DJ for the ride and the dialog over the music was fascinating. The playlist consisted mostly of rap music (the genre I struggle with the most) and I gleaned a lot from their chat over each song. They all knew who every artist was and as the song played they would discuss the artist and the latest thing they had heard about them, good or bad. They would rap together along with sections of the song (impressive by any standard and an indication of how many times they had listened to it on repeat). I listened as they connected over every single song and commented on which kid’s favorite artist or song it was. It was a blatant connection point and I had to respect the bond, even if the music itself felt like a cheese grater on my brain. I have seen this happen over other genres as well. Take theater nerds, for instance. If you start playing a Hamilton song over the loudspeaker in a room full of theater kids, watch the magic. The music that kids have collectively immersed themselves in connects them to one another and that is a place you want your kid to be, safely tucked into a tribe of head-bobbing 8th grade rappers or a gang of flamboyant musical theater belters.

THEIR PLAYLIST DOES NOT = THEIR MORALITY I tend to buck against the system of belief that says that I am what I listen to. I love Def Leppard and yet I have not had a single one night stand or actually poured any sugar on myself or anyone else. I listen to Hotel California on repeat and yet I have never done hallucinogens or joined a cult. My daughter cleans her house to Ariana Grande and has not become the least bit materialistic or shallow. It is a fearful mindset that says that music has the ability to change our character merely by listening to it. There has to be much more at play in a person’s life for a song to carry that much weight. 

I mean this on the other end of the spectrum as well. You can have a squeaky clean ipod with a Hillsong saturated rotation and have a heart full of envy and hatred. A song will take you where your heart wants to go with it. I have been moved to repentance and apology by a song. I have also been completely disconnected while listening to a song about the love of God. It’s not about the song. (I am a songwriter, so that’s saying a lot.)

Therefore, if your child happens to have songs that glorify gangs, drug culture or skirt chasing in their playlist it may not actually mean they are about to ditch school and take part in the sex trade. Shaming your child for these elements being present in the music they are choosing to listen to will only alienate them from you. Shaming your child for ANYTHING will alienate them from you. If the goal is connection, shame is not the way forward. They are not necessarily the product of their playlist. However, it may mean…

THEY ARE NUMB TO THEIR CULTURE It’s easy for kids to get numb to some of the messages that popular culture endorses. I am a mother of young men in a world where women are degraded and rape culture is promoted and pushed along by factions of the music industry.  While I don’t believe that merely listening to a song that degrades women will make my good hearted sons into violent misogynists, I do believe they can grow numb to those messages when the music that delivers them is their favorite jam.  Make no mistake, I will throw down.

One day I turned on my Spotify and one of my younger sons’ playlists was cued up. I listened in and was not just shocked, but mortified and disgusted by what was coming at me. It had the same rappy vibe as the other songs on that playlist but the lyrics were blatantly degrading to women and most assuredly endorsed rape culture. I went home and printed the lyrics off. That night, we had a fun little lyric recitation in the living room. My boys were highly uncomfortable. Truly, this was a “suggested music ” Spotify generated playlist (thanks for nothing, Spotify) and they had not cued up that song. It was shocking to them to hear their mom read disgusting lyrics like that in lilting iambic pentameter. My goal was not to shame them but my point was this, “Wake up! I know the behavior described in this song is not anything you would ever support or do, you are good hearted men! So don’t stand idly by while these messages are propagated, just because a song has that beat that makes you want to dunk on some fools. (My boys loooooove it when I say that.) We won’t endorse deal-breaker-violation-of -human-rights-cultural-poison by even giving 3 Spotify cents to it. If you want me to continue to pay for your Spotify, internet and phone, then keep your playlists free of music that carries sewage. Stand up for women in this way.”

So you see, I won’t endorse a passive, let your kids listen to whatever they want without weighing in approach. It is up to you to impart your values to your kids while you can, on every front. But, if music is a battlefield for you and your kid, YOU are the one who can change that. If you are fearful and controlling about what they are listening to and if you open the conversation by shaming them, music will never be a way to your child’s heart for you. If your kid is the DJ and the music is hardcore cringy for you, I implore you, get over it. If you can find something positive to say about the track at hand, like, “wow, that is an incredible bass line” or “how did he say so many words that fast?” or “that high note was incredible” you will make it safe for them to play the music they love for you and then you will be IN your kid’s world, and isn’t that exactly where you want to be?

When I was getting into bed a few nights ago one of my kids sent me a text with a link to a song. It was a sad song and he was using it to communicate the state of his heart to me. Thank God for this language of connection we can have in music.