One of the things I'm pretty proud of as a mom is not falling victim to mom-guilt--you know, that feeling that you should be stimulating/talking/playing/doing more with your child than you are, especially after reading obnoxious posts about people with perfect lives. I must confess that every now and then I do look at kidlet and wonder if there's anything more I could/should be doing, but really, he's such a happy and good little boy that the question never really crosses my mind.
However, we all have our Achilles' heel, and mine is song. We almost always play the radio for him, so he does get music--I'm pretty sure he knows all of Madonna's hits by now. Sometimes we think to put on a classical music CD. But since he's always been an easy sleeper (I know, you want to kill me) I never really had an opportunity to sing all of the lullabies, or kinderliedjes, in my repertoire or Karel's. And on the rare occasions that he needs a song to soothe him, well, let's just say his tastes run a bit morbid.
It's been bugging me a bit because last week, Karel bit the bullet and ordered me two cases for storing up to 840 CDs, and I spent a good 5-6 hours organizing and indexing all 500+ CDs in our combined collections. Included in this mess of Bach and Beck, Telemann and Plain White Ts, were 5 or 6 CDs full of kinderliedjes that I used to play to him back when he was still a little baconoid. These days, though, between practicing walking and going to the library, more often than not there is no real quiet moment to sit and listen to the songs properly. Not that I can figure out what the words are without the lyrics in front of me, anyway.
I know that it won't hurt him in the long run, and besides, "Scarborough Fair" is a perfectly legitimate ditty. It's just that he's already getting an abnormal upbringing as it is--most people have their kids in at least part-time daycare by now; our days are usually a mix of snacks and small meals; I let him look at things*--that denying him, however inadvertently, this bit of Dutch culture just seems wrong.
*This is part of the reason why, despite doing less, I still don't have enough time to do everything. When we're out walking, I give him as much time as he needs to look at stuff, to make up his own mind about the things he sees. It means our walks take about three times as long as they need to, but IMO letting the kidlet figure out how things work means it'll be less difficult for me to explain why he can't just run out into traffic.
However, we all have our Achilles' heel, and mine is song. We almost always play the radio for him, so he does get music--I'm pretty sure he knows all of Madonna's hits by now. Sometimes we think to put on a classical music CD. But since he's always been an easy sleeper (I know, you want to kill me) I never really had an opportunity to sing all of the lullabies, or kinderliedjes, in my repertoire or Karel's. And on the rare occasions that he needs a song to soothe him, well, let's just say his tastes run a bit morbid.
It's been bugging me a bit because last week, Karel bit the bullet and ordered me two cases for storing up to 840 CDs, and I spent a good 5-6 hours organizing and indexing all 500+ CDs in our combined collections. Included in this mess of Bach and Beck, Telemann and Plain White Ts, were 5 or 6 CDs full of kinderliedjes that I used to play to him back when he was still a little baconoid. These days, though, between practicing walking and going to the library, more often than not there is no real quiet moment to sit and listen to the songs properly. Not that I can figure out what the words are without the lyrics in front of me, anyway.
I know that it won't hurt him in the long run, and besides, "Scarborough Fair" is a perfectly legitimate ditty. It's just that he's already getting an abnormal upbringing as it is--most people have their kids in at least part-time daycare by now; our days are usually a mix of snacks and small meals; I let him look at things*--that denying him, however inadvertently, this bit of Dutch culture just seems wrong.
*This is part of the reason why, despite doing less, I still don't have enough time to do everything. When we're out walking, I give him as much time as he needs to look at stuff, to make up his own mind about the things he sees. It means our walks take about three times as long as they need to, but IMO letting the kidlet figure out how things work means it'll be less difficult for me to explain why he can't just run out into traffic.
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