Tuning In

Listening to the car radio with your little ones can be tricky business. Dangerous even. They sit back and take in every word while you furiously punch the buttons to protect their tiny ears from F-bombs. Then you pray that they do't go to school and share this new vocabulary.

The safest way to prevent musical mishaps is to bring along some parent-approved tunes on a CD or MP3 player. Fred Penner and The Wiggles will never steer you wrong. But once your kids reach grade school, they want to listen to real music.

Last week Hubby picked our seven year old up from his karate class, and of course the first thing Junior did was flick on the radio. They drove along, chatting and listening to some tunes. All was going well until one particular song - The Lazy Song by Bruno Mars. Now Hubby just recently had satellite radio installed in his car. The local radio station has an edited version of this song, and the offending sex word is removed. Not so in this version. Hubby frantically pushed at buttons, but too late, the damage was done.

When they arrived home, Hubby related the incident in all its sordid detail. What would happen? What if he asked what that word was? We'd have to have the talk a bit earlier that we thought. What if he went to school and talked about, you know, it?

Just then, Junior came strolling down the hallway, singing the dreaded song. We froze. We listened. Junior sang:

...meet a really nice girl, have some really nice eggs
And she's gonna sing out this is great

All that worrying washed away in fits of laughter. Hubby learned that kids are not so easily corrupted as he thought. He also learned to listen to the kids station when Junior is on board.