I won't say we're exactly a musical family. I took four or five years of violin and never learned enough to even be classed as competent. My husband never took lessons on an instrument, but has taught himself a lot about music and with the help of the shape notes in our hymnals can read it pretty well.

We do sing a lot. We sing in church. We sing at home. We have several song books we get out of an evening and just cuddle the kids and sing with them. I can carry a tune decently, although it would be more helpful if I had any skill at singing harmony, because I should be an alto. My husband can sing well, sings tenor or bass and leads singing at church. The older two like to sing and hum and of course listen to music.

In the car, we have a wide variety of cds. Things like Wee Sing and The Wiggles are mixed in with both cooler kid's music and things like bluegrass and rock that we, the parents, owned pre-child.

Most of the pre-kiddie music isn't too bad and can be played for them. We weren't nearly as sensitive to some of the words and themes before we had children though. More and more, I notice things that never appeared to me before. I never paid attention to what the Beatles song Daytripper was saying, until my son decided he wanted to listen to the Beatles all the time.

We were listening to Rattle and Hum a while back, and it seemed fine until a few days later when I hear my five year old singing Helter Skelter to himself.

Then again last week, we were listening to Johnny Cash in the car and my husband was really enjoying Folsom Prison Blues. I think we heard it two or three times while driving around. Hearing my son singing, "I shot a man in Reno..." while building with his Legos, wasn't quite so pleasant.

Parenting is a continually evolving job. I don't think we've failed or even screwed up too badly by letting the kids hear grown up music, even that with certain grown up themes. On the other hand, I think my son is far too young to be thinking much about these things and I'm not really ready to hear him singing some of these songs though.

I'll start paying closer attention to the lyrics, skip past more songs on various CDs and when these moments arise, we'll keep doing what we've been doing and talk to the kids about what the songs mean and what's wrong with them.