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Technology Thursday
Anyone else out there remember back in the day when if we wanted to get one of our favorite songs on tape, we'd sit poised over a tape-recorder's 'record' button holding the recorder up to the radio waiting for the song to be played? Yeah, that was a loooong time ago. First there was the cd -- access to whatever song on the album we wanted, whenever, without having to fast-forward or rewind! Then there was the mp3 and the iPod -- access to whatever song we owned (if you are obsessive like me and ripped all of your CDs), whenever you want. And right in your pocket! And of course, there are things like Pandora -- access to just about any song you can think of whenever you want, wherever there's an Internet connection.
I still marvel at the fact that technology has come so far with music - even though each step, in retrospect, seems logical and makes sense. Between the two of us, my husband and I have about 15000 songs in our iTunes library. All legal, even! We have a couple of Airport Express devices connected to speakers and a couple of iPodTouches with Apple Remote so we can beam music from the library to anywhere in the house and control it from wherever we happen to be sitting. Our son has not had a day of his life go by where he hasn't heard music of some kind or another.
Very early on, after he was born, we created three big playlists for him: Baby-Happy, Baby-Calm, and Baby-Sleepy. We use them all the time to try to induce a happy, calm, or sleepy mood as the case may be. We also periodically update them -- adding new songs as we think of them or hear them in some other context. Some of the songs on these lists are specifically children's music, but most are just various songs from our library. My son has had music playing, softly, through the night almost every night of his life. He sleeps without music at daycare, so we know he's not totally dependent on it. But sometimes I wonder if later in life he'll be annoyed at how much space in his brain these playlists will probably end up taking.
Technology has really allowed us to expose him, at just 8 months, to a far larger set of music than we ever were exposed to as kids. I hope it gives him an appreciation of all different kinds of music and I hope it's helping to wire up his brain for smart things, but most of all I hope he continues to enjoy it. And I'm really looking forward to him expressing more explicit preferences about what he wants to listen to.
What music do you recommend for kids? Is it possible to listen to music too much? How has technology changed the way you and your family deal with music?
Our kids (2 and 5) also love music and expect it on demand. They get confused when we're listening to the radio and can't "go back" to hear a song they liked. We are big fans of "Music Together" and also the Wiggles. Ironically, our children listen to white noise at night and classical music at daycare! Now when they hear classical music then call it "night-night music".
Posted by: Katherine | Sunday, March 08, 2009 at 10:59 AM