I am intrigued. My name is Dale and I learned the chewing gum song plus a million others at camp. I have always sung or played music (mostly camp songs) to my children their whole childhoods, and they learned more and sang more when they too went to summer camp. I have gotten feedback from this article from friends thinking it is me. The other Dale is free to contact me. I would love to e-meet her.
1
My older brother sang to me and I remember being delighted.
It made me feel special and contributed to my self esteem when I was a little girl. I was reminded of that joy when singing with my grandchildren. I know someday they will remember our singing and giggling when they sing to their children. A lovely thought in these troubling times.
1
I sang to my children from the moment they were born and now I am using the same songs on my grandchildren (also to teach them English, since I live in Germany). So this article really hit home and I am sending it to my daughters.
Yesterday I held my youngest granddaughter, not quite a week old, in my arms and sang her my entire repertoire, from "Sumer is Icumen In" through John Dowland ("Fine Knacks for Babies") and then the obligatory "Baby Face", Cole Porter and Broadway hits, for over an hour while she slept calmly in my arms, so peacefully that my daughter was able for the first time to relax and discuss home furnishings with her mother without constant thoughts about feeding, changing diapers and the like.
What a wonderful day it was.
5
I loved this article! Does anyone know where I can find the melody to Malvina Reynolds, "Put on Your Hat and Let's go Down to the Garden"? I used to sing this lovely song to my children but no longer remember the tune. I would love to sing it to my granddaughter.
@hmishara - It seems while the lyrics can be found in a quick Google search, I read on the website listing all her songs that there isn't a recording of that one. However, the music is in a song book she wrote called "Song Pocket Songs" which someone is currently selling on Abebooks
https://www.abebooks.com/Song-Pocket-Songs-Malvina-Reynolds-California/2...
I’ve made a Spotify playlist for me and my granddaughter, who is about just about 9 months old - it’s now about 10 hours long. However, when she is a bit tired or needing some special time, I sing the same 3 songs to her over and over - You Are My Sunshine, My Grandfather’s Clock and Bought Me a Cat. She LOVES hearing them over and over.
3
Across the past century, human beings have quickly abandoned singing and, more broadly, music-making for themselves. (Likewise, we now "farm out" our own entertainment, having created an entire global industry to produce that for us to access on demand.)
Today, a "song" has sadly become something that is performed by a professional class of musicians, usually technologically enhanced, and widely distributed for our passive consumption.
Even lullabies, elaborately produced, can be downloaded and queued up for a bedtime subsitution of the parent's own voice.
Connecting with a young child through "song," however, requires neither artful lyrics, nor sophisticated melodies. The young child responds to the human voice itself, I believe, as its quality modulates away from the random articulation of speech and moves into a simpified, evened-out flow of rising/falling sound. A brief phrase of a few notes and a few words or syllables, repeated, is all it takes. Perhaps "sing-song" is a better term?
You'll be good to go with just two or three different notes (in tune or not), any repeated rhythmic pattern of long and short notes, and a few nonsense syllables or words (head, shoulders, knees, and toes). What is not required, parents and grandparents, is musical training or musical talent, and certainly not a personal repertoire of memorized "songs" to sing. Rediscover how to "play" with "song" again, embrace your own creativity, and recapture this endangered human trait.
3
oh i just love this! especially interesting to understand how children feel "rewarded" when they hear a song on repeat ~ how their expectations are met and how comforting it is ~ keep on singing!
3
Loved this article and the comments! For me, singing to my first son was therapeutic for us both. My father died unexpectedly two weeks before his birth, so I was exquisitely sad and joyful at the same time. Singing calmed and enriched us both, and made it easier for me to be fully emotionally available to my newborn, as I sang Dad's favorites (including Shenandoah, old leftie songs, and now non-PC Stephen Foster). Stephen Foster's not in the rotation now with my 2-year- old grandson, but everything else is fair game, including Broadway showtunes, Gilbert & Sulivan, and 40s lounge standards, updated with 50s, 60s and 70s folk and rock, and Hebrew songs and chants from Tot Shabbat. He has sung spontaneously on his own since before he could talk, loves hearing new songs, and plays a mean plastic guitar with many. Songs also help bridge a language gap: he speaks German as well as English, but it's toddler Swiss German, which even his parents can't always decode. Sharing the German songs he has learned in daycare is unifying. And we've dredged up melodic French and Italian songs we know as well - he enjoys them all, and we're all flexing musical, linguistic and emotional muscles!
2
Here's a beautiful Boz Scaggs number, "Fly Like A Bird", baby cries, grandma sings to him.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ge3s3QvRqco&index=6&t=0s&lis...
When I was in Iraq, I would sing to my daughter through the phone ("Mujer abre tu ventana", from Danny Rivera). When I came back and saw her, I started singing that same song. She opened her big eyes, smile, and extended her little arms. I left her when she was 3-months-old and came back when she was a year old. Sing to your baby, even if you are tone deaf.
15
My first assignment as a professional songwriter was “to write a lullaby with positive lyrics.” Unable to have children, it was an emotional experience and new songs (beyond the pop and country genres I had been writing), began to pour out of me. Two of them “Wings” and “Someday Baby” were recorded on “A Child’s Gift of Lullabyes” which was nominated for a Grammy. Those lullabyes also sang me into a career I never anticipated: a writer and performer of children’s music with 12 albums known as “Hunk-T-Bunk-Ta”. Today, I continue to create and perform music for family audiences and am only one of a host of others who also do that important work. Whether you are a toddler, school-ager, tween, teen, young adult, new parent, grand, great or even great great grand, let your singing voices and the songs you love carry far.
2
Sang to my children in the womb and every night thereafter to get them ready for sleep. They both slept through the night from 2 weeks on and both rather calm children, we didn’t experience terrible twos or threes. Might be a connection?
1
Walk, shepherds walk, and I’ll walk too.
We’ll find the ram with the ebony horn and the gold-footed ewe.
My mother sang that to me over 50 years ago. It still brings tears to my eyes.
2
@Kat
https://maxhunter.missouristate.ed/songinformation.aspx?ID=103
1
I have been singing classic rock and 50s to my five month old son. I can’t recall lyrics to traditional kids songs so I pick an artist and we listen to, and sing a few each night. Last night it was Bob Segear’s Night Moves and the Overtones Goodnight Sweetheart, Goodnight.
1
Music has the ability to transcend time. When I hear any songs off of the "Cruisin Classics" tapes that were given out when you got gas at a Shell station... I am transported. Transported to summer camping trips in 1989 with my dad in his 78 Chevy pick up, warm air blowing through the cab, the smell of gas, warm evergreens and musty sleeping bags, his raybands and straw hat, and me, excited as hell for another adventure. It fills me with nostalgia. So much so, when I got married 20 yrs later we danced to "My Girl" because it takes me back to those special times with my dad.
4
From where I was born and raised in Africa , singing is a form of communication with babies . When babies fuss , Mothers ( usually mothers ) sing. Fussy eaters would get feed through singing. Sometimes the lyrics are made up and sing the thing you are doing with the baby instead of talking. Mothers work in a field and sing throughout their work hours, its for them and also for those babies that strap in their backs. You can talk and explain things to babies but try singing it, it works, you will see babies expression change to listening mood !
6
I sang "Surfer Girl" to both my daughters but changed the lyric to "Burper Girl". It is definitely a lullaby!
I also sang "Special Angel" with a southern twang a la Bobby Helms--and when I got to the "Special Angel" lyric, I would tickle them--so much fun all around.
Finally, both my girls were in my lap when we sang the book "Go in and Out the Window" from the Metropolitan Museum of Art--a book of music and great paintings to illustrate. GET IT!
4
I sang songs like "What'll I do" and "Don't fence me in" and "When I grow to old to dream" and many of the songs mentioned here when my sons were babies and toddlers. Now in their forties, they will claim not to remember any of the songs unless I happen to start to start singing one. "Oh, THAT one!"
When my first NJ grandson (I have one in Florida as well) was born he had a lot of "tummy trouble" and I was a babysitter for a week. I walked him and walked him, and then one day (in desperation) I started singing "Always" in the lowest, soothingest voice I could muster. I had a calmer baby after the first two lines. I sang that song for days! Now he's five, and when I visit and it's bedtime, I still sing it and he still automatically snuggles. I hope that lasts.
And finally, when my mother was nearing the end of her life, and struggling with dementia, we were waiting in a doctor's office and I started singing "Peg o' My Heart". "Sing that again', she said. And then she asked for "K-K-K-Katy", and then would regularly ask for a song that came to her mind. I knew a lot of them, and when I didn't, she'd reach back into the memory recesses and often come up with one I did know.
Singing can bring happiness and comfort to the singer and the listener.
37
When my daughter was two, she cut her lip badly enough to require the services of an oral surgeon. As she was being stitched up, she cried piteously and so I began to sing “Happy Birthday” very quietly into her ear. She stopped crying and just listened intently. The staff felt so bad that this had happened on her birthday that I had to reassure them that it wasn’t but that every child loves that song in the hopes that cake and presents will follow. She got both.
5
Love this article and the comments! When my grandson was born, I sang The Beatles “I Will”.. “who knows how long I’ve loved you, you know I love you still...”. I sing Bushel and a Peck; he likes the “doodle oodle oo do”. His personal favorite is a song called Baby Shark.
1
Morningtown Ride got my three month old grandson to calm and sleep every time.
1
During a very intense and long labor with my daughter, the doctor gave us an hour stabilize her heart rate. My doula noticed that when my husband and I spoke and sang to her she responded positively. We sang Bob Marley's Three Little Birds over and over again and after an hour she was stable. We avoided a c-section and she was born 12 hrs later healthy as perfect as can be! Music has always been a big part of my life but only now can I speak directly to its power.
2
As a first time grandparent of a 15 month old little boy, I am delighted when he starts to dance around the a quiet playroom and bounce his head in tune to a song that only he can hear.
I cannot wait until he can sing his own words!
1
I sing half-learned Chinese songs picked up from my little ones grandmother. I just hum over the words I don't know - my baby doesn't mind. Soon she'll be teaching me the right way anyway.
1
My bilingual grandson (Spanish-English) absolutely loves it when I sing and always has... from Row, row, row, your boat...to My Name is Brontosaurus I’m a funny looking dinosaur....having worked in preschool while I was in graduate school has given us a vast repotroire. When I sing he often just stops and tries to sing along. There is something magical about songs and look up Woody Guthro’s song “Mail Myself to You”. A real show stopper.
4
Ah, yes. When my granddaughter was eight months old, I picked her up from her nap when she called out and carried her over to a picture window, where I began singing “Greensleeves,” a favorite, as I swayed a bit. Suddenly, from my shoulder came the baby warbling, in imitation of my singing. I began laughing - and so did she.
3
Out of nowhere, that 50s television tune "We Ain't Got a Barrel of Money" has come to mind and I've taught it to all four granddaughters, our current favorite. Singing with children. very powerful.
1
My kids' first song was "Waltz Across Texas," the Willie Nelson version. But the song I probably heard first, and definitely heard last, from my Dad was "You are my Sunshine." He sang it thousands of times.
We also made up many songs with the babies' names in them, and changed many more to be about them.
They were of the Raffi generation, although we also liked Banana Slug String Band. My son was a great traveler, doing 18 hour-days cross country, but his sister hated riding in the car, and never slept there. Music was our only recourse.
At least now they have eclectic tastes after being exposed to everything we tried to placate them with. I'm still constantly amazed by how much my son knows about the music of "my" generation, the 60's and early 70's. And if he has kids, they will definitely get his song, my song, and loads of others.
1
@Susan--Also "Blue Moon" and "Summertime."
2
We used to sing "You can't always get what you want" to our kids. Now my son sings it to his daughter
3
What an illuminating read. It's new information to me that babies respond to and remember music so readily.
The first song I sang to my sister's first baby was "Born to Run." (No, the baby's name was not Wendy.)
3
I sing constantly to my ten month old. I sing nonsense songs I make up and songs my parents played for me. I was singing a slow version of Neil Young's "Comes a Time" at bedtime the other night when she started to try to sing with me! Fortunately, I was able to record it and send it to my parents.
4
oh I love this column. I can hear how "Surfer Girl" is a lullaby, and "Mr Lee" is a wake up/cheer up/swing the baby around song. And how Dr Mehr's "American Tune" is a 3am lullaby: "It's all right/I'm just weary to my bones."
My mother remembered ever song she ever heard, I think, and sang to us all the time. Reading these comments has made me recall so many of those songs that I hadn't heard in decades.
3
One memorable phrase in our household resulted from a misheard Beatles lyric. “I lovey-do you!” was called out as a goodbye in person or on the phone, and used in letters and emails. Sometimes I would sing or hum the first verse when giving a long hug.
One day, many years later, when my youngest son was 18 or so, “Love Me Do” came on the car radio. “Wait - what - that’s a REAL song?!? By the BEATLES?!?” Obviously I hadn’t given him enough exposure to their early catalogue.
10
@HeidiH too funny! This is the song that I sing to my daughter and like the article states, I’m not really sure why or where it came from...but love that it’s our special song!
1
My grown son often reminds me that only Stevie Nicks songs can bring him a pure, comforting sense of peace when the world gets too brash. I sang her songs to him constantly while he was in the womb, and after, and it surely became a part of him. Now, in our too few alone moments, I sing the same songs to my grandson, and his huge eyes just watch me in wonder as if he had a front row seat to the greatest concert on earth. It surely isn’t that great, but then again, it just may be.
7
Melodies more than words! Good thing when the lyrics prove elusive for a grandparent brain. Our little one especially resonates to resonance, so we swaddle her in hums. Even the uh-huhs and ums and ahs will do when memory fails.
5
Newborns sleep approximately 16–18 hours each day, a fact that may totally astound you if you’ve been stumbling around in a sleep-deprived state since Junior arrived on the scene.
Because newborns aren’t born with mature circadian rhythms (the circadian rhythm is the built-in body clock that regulates how wide awake and how sleepy we feel at various points in the day, and that requires resetting each day so our internal schedules will mesh with the 24-hour schedule that the world operates on), a newborn’s sleep patterns are very different from those of an adult.
for more https://www.thebabycarepedia.com/baby-sleep-regression/
I found myself singing songs/ ditties really , that my parents had sang to me: “Rings on her fingers”, “She’ll be coming ‘round the Mountain”. Also songs from my youth “Corrina, Corrina”, “Iko, Iko”. I hope she’ll sing them to her children. What a great way to link generations.
5
You are my Sunshine! Sing and repeat again and again.
5
Yakkety yak, don’t talk back. She laughed until I cried.
6
With tears streaming down my cheeks and my first granddaughter tucked in my arms, I sang It Had to be You.
9
My grandfather, born in Germany in 1884, sang “Hup, hup, pferdchen lauf Galopp,” and “Huppa Huppa, Reiter” while bouncing baby me on his knee. At the end of both songs, he would stretch his leg out so that I sank nearly to the floor. Then he would lift his leg and me back again and both of us laughed with delight. Fast forward 60+ years and I’m doing it with my grandsons, to a new generation of smiles. Thank you, Papa!
7
@Mommell, I am pretty sure my parents sung an equivalent song to me in English back in the 50s: Trot-a-trot to Boston. With the same sinking at the end. And I have sung the same to many in the next generation.
2
@Anne and there's an Italian version too that my sons' grandmothwe would say, involving a horseman on a horse, but neither I nor they remember it.
1
Being of Irish ancestry, I sang Tura Lura Lura to my three baby boys. So far, two are married and this was our mother-groom song we danced to. Sweet, sweet memories.
5
My son and I danced to "the baby elephant walk" by Henry Mancini
1
Holding my granddaughter sitting on the front porch, “Here comes the sun” by George Harrison.
11
There was a live performance version of this that frequently played on the Pandora channel I made for my son as an infant. When he was a toddler, it never failed to delight is both when it came on and the audience applauded. His delight was an to say "oh yay!" and clap along, mine in watching him respond to the song.
1
My Bonnie lies over the ocean,
My Bonnie lies over the sea.
My Bonnie lies over the ocean.
Oh bring back my Bonnie to me.
7
"Clementine" is a great song to sing to children.
For 21 years I played the piano and sang to kindergarteners, and, of course, they sang with me. Wonderful memories!
I love the Raffi albums for children. The words are clear, and the instruments sound very good.
I had Public Radio on much of the time when my children were growing up, and they listened to lots of classical music and jazz.
10
“Clementine” is great as long as you don’t listen too closely to the lyrics!!
5
@Ace J
The same thing goes for "You Are My Sunshine!"
My grandmother was born in the 19th century and lived with us until she died in 1968. Thanks to her love of song, I have a large repertoire of tunes, ranging from World War 1 through the Depression, and World War 11 onward. "It's a Long Long Trail a Winding," "when the Moon Comes Over the Mountain," etc. From the time I was an infant to when I cooked with her in the kitchen, we always sang. Thanks Grandma! I owe you my love of music.
20
@Techvet what a wonderful legacy! My maternal grandmother, born in 1904, would sing me lullabies and songs in Hungarian and Czech -- I can hum them a little, but the words are gone (since I never learned either language).
It's funny how deeply imbedded this music is in our brains -- yes, even into old age and dementia. I often think of the part of "2001" where they remove the memory chips from the computer HAL and finally his last memory of is singing "Daisy, Daisy".
4
I still tear up when I recall the moment my daughter and son-in-law greeted their new baby son in the hospital. Charlie brought his guitar for this occasion and sang “Beautiful Boy” by John Lennon. The baby loves this song at 8 months, too.
29
Long after my mother could remember who I was, she was still singing the lyrics of the music that she so loved and that had enriched her life and mine .
Although Alzheimer's robbed her of her clarity ,her uninterrupted memory of the lyrics that spoke of romance and love and hope and heartache - the language of life-was never taken from her.
I can still feel her bending down and gathering my winter coat together to button as I was about to head out the door to school and her singing "button up your overcoat let wind blow free take good care of yourself you belong to me".
The presence of music deepened the lifelong love and friendship between my mother and I.
It allowed us to communicate freely with one another with the certainty of understanding that comes when one knows another's heart and soul.
In the final moments of her life, as the sun was setting outside her bedroom window, it was Louis Armstrong singing What a Wonderful World.
It was music that strengthened the faith and hope my mother had always had for a good or better life for all and in the end, it gave her a peaceful and gentle death. She deserved nothing less.
" Though I dream in vain
In my heart it will remain
My stardust melody
The memory of love's refrain"...
59
My twin grandsons were in the intensive care unit at four months, desperately ill with RSV. I found myself holding one, and then the other, attached to tubes and monitors, singing quietly through my entire repertoire of songs. I know I was soothing myself as well as them.
53
I was a single working mother at 43 ,with a fussy, colicky infant. So I hated my limited time with her was one long cry. I was, still am, a terrible singer but saw a book in a bookstore about the benefit of singing to infants. It pointed out that babies were not critics and practice improves most everything! So I started to sing to her constantly, while caring for her, especially when preparing for bed, any nonsense tune would do!
This was over 30 years ago, so this article interested me! I rocked and sang her to sleep every night, until she was too interested in what was going on around her. So we would finish up with tapes of classical music, once in bed, Vivaldi was her favorite! Even now I believe, when stressed, she goes to sleep with quiet classical music. For many, of all ages, and stations, music is a common denominator of comfort.
36
I sing “American Pie” to get my 16 month old grandson to fall asleep. My son said it played on the radio and my grandson started dancing and saying, “poppa”.
22
In the delivery room after the parents, my daughter wanted me to hold her newborn son. Spontaneously, him cleaned up and wrapped up tight, I started to sing Rosie and the originals ‘Angel Baby’... “It’s just like heaven being here with you, you’re like an angel to good to be true. Ooo ooo I love you ooo ooo I do ....” by ten months old he sang every beat with me. We are waiting to dance together to our song if he has a wedding some day in the distant future. Just turned 13 and he is an angel.
18
"Yes, We have no Bananas"
"What do you do with a drunken sailor"
16
My go-to lullaby is Hush Little Baby which has always worked everywhere, with kids, grandkids and even strangers! Whay a joyful way to befriend & love children!
8
My mother sang Irish rebel songs to her first granddaughter. Sarah heard “the men with the vision, the men with the cause” as “the men with the vision, the men with the claws” and pictured the men as bears running out of the wood with talons. She couldn’t understand why they needed guns if they had claws.
10
The 59th Street Bridge song..it made my daughters and me feel groovy.
2
I sang Home on the Range to my son Anton, who would ask me to sing “where the deer and the Anton play.”
15
Many people can't sing, or feel uncomfortable singing, or are self-conscious about it. Yet many of those people have a good-quality speaking voice, and know how to add a music-like quality by using vocal variety, by letting the tones modulate up and down. What counts is the focused, light-hearted attention showered through a loving voice. Repeated snippets of a group of words can become as fixed in the baby's conscious as a song. The salutary power of the human voice is not limited to songs.
6
@William: poetry too! My parents used to read me all kinds of wonderful children's poetry and I adored it and continued this with my kids -- especially Ogden Nash. I can still recite most of "Custard The Cowardly Dragon" by heart!
7
When my grandson was a newborn, I'd walk with him outside and made up a song about birds in a tree singing--short but, I thought, sweet. To my amazement, it calmed him down.
2
My twin sons had a tape deck in their room since they were 6 months old with children's songs I played every night at bedtime. It was a calming experience for them and for me.
As tiny infants when they were fussy, their father sang songs to calm them down- one son got Tura Lura Lurie and the other son heard I love to Sing-a about the moon-a and the june-a and the spring-a from a cartoon. It worked!
6
My parents sang to me and I sing to my kids. My wife doesn't really sing to them though. Her parents didn't sing to her. One of the reason I made sure to start sing to them when they were first born is as a study I read about a part of the brain which develops and changes dramatically for their first few years of life. It is the part of the brain which has to do with mimicking sounds. It is why when people don't learn a second language until their are older it is very hard for them to not have a heavy accent in the new language. Particularly if it is only the second language they learn. This same part of the brain also is vital for musicians as it lets them repeat sounds their hear or otherwise express the music they imagine in their heads. Both my parents talented, though amateur, musicians. My father speaks 3 languages, and my mother 5. I grew up with two languages, and have since picked up 3 more. All while sounding like a native. Though, admittedly the last 3 not quite with a native's vocabulary. I am proficient a singer and guitar player, but also can get by on the drums, piano, and trumpet. I am not saying that to brag, just to point out that developing that part of the brain at a young age opens up someone to be proficient not only musically but linguistically as well. My wife though very proficient in English, does not sound like a native speaker and probably never will. Sing to your children!
5
@Still Waiting for a NBA Title
Sorry for typos.
I sang I Love You a Bushel and a Peck to one son, and I Love You Forever to the other. Now I am singing I Love You a Bushel and a Peck to my baby granddaughter. From one generation to another. It doesn't get much better than this!
10
@Leah "I Love You a Bushel and a Peck" for our younger son, and for some crazy reason "A Capital Ship on an Ocean Trip (was the Walloping Window Blind)" for our older son. I learned that one in elementary school in Paterson.
We also used to make up our own words to tv theme songs mostly for the older son. The one coming to mind right now is the Maverick one, only in our case it was Teddy Bear is a legend in the West! But there were a lot of Westerns for some reason.
My sister and I were rocked to sleep with "Shrimp Boats are a-Comin' " courtesy of our dad.
3
For me / my babies it was "Sugar Pie Honey." For my 38-year old, it's still her favorite song.
7
Not a grandparent, but a parent. Both my girls were brought through infancy and toddler hood with a combo of classic showtunes, some of the Great American Songbook and 70s and 80s power ballads. My first memory of singing to my older daughter was in a rocking chair shortly after we came home from the hospital - a day or two later. It was in the middle of the night. She was fussy. The first thing that came to mind was "Goodnight My Someone" from The Music Man - I have no idea why. But I sang and she was soothed. Some classical was thrown in for good measure - often snippets of Tallis or Palestrina (I sing in Anglican church choirs).
Our younger daughter had a love, like her dad, of the Grateful Dead - particularly Sugar Magnolia - to settle her down in the car.
My girls, now 18 and 15, both to this day, love Broadway and classic rock. They can belt out show tunes and Bohemian Rhapsody. Music is powerful and should never be underestimated.
4
@Knitter215
Tonight my Someone was what I used to get daughter to sleep. I still cry when I hear it, 27 years later.
3
@Kathy Such a pretty song.
1
Just remember to turn off the baby monitor when you are singing them to sleep if you have a voice like mine!
My 2 main songs for my 4 kids were: The Who--"Behind Blue Eyes" and "In the Jungle, the Mighty Jungle." Its amazing how many different animal/location combinations you can make up when you are just desperately trying to get a kid to fall asleep. Alas, none of my kids remember either song despite having heard both hundreds of times.
6
The Little Red Songbook
Yes, yes, yes! I used to sing to my son at bedtime, songs like "Big Yellow Taxi", Puff the Magic Dragon" and "All the Little Horses" (he used to ask me to sing "Lacks'n Bays" because of the lyric "blacks and bays"!). Yes, I read to him, but I always sang as well.
3
My go to songs are top 40 from the 1940s. Nothing pleases a baby like Cole Porter or the Big Band Sound.
""you leave the Pennsylvania station at quarter to 4, you read a magazine and you're in Baltimore. Dinner in the dinner, nothing could be finer, than to have your ham and eggs in Carolina"
8
@sjslullabies on the sofa
grandfather holds the child
to his chest hoping
that both could get
a bit of a snore,
but boy swings his head
from side to side,
fidgeting feet and hands.
so grandfather begins to sing
deep tones so off-tune
he worries of forever damaging
the child’s sense of pitch.
vocal vibrations
begin to calm baby
so continues the sing and hum—
lullabies and silly songs
like row, row, row your boat
which has to
slow down to a
very
slow
boat
he is rowing
while gently patting
the baby’s bottom
until squirming ceases,
the man feeling
steady breaths on his
wrinkled neck, looking down—
the sleeping face,
wonder in repose, and
that moment passes.
14
@Michael O'Brien Nice. Very nice. Did you write it?
1
@sjsThanks for your kind comments. Yes, I wrote the poem last year.
1
Absolutely wonderful column. I love knowing that singing to babies is so good for them (since it comes so naturally!), also reading everyone's beautiful stories about singing to grandchildren. When our granddaughter was still in the womb, my son said he sang to her almost every night the beautiful song, "If I Had Words," from the movie, Babe. When she was only a day old, she was moved temporarily to the neonatal ICU for tests. That day, he sang "If I Had Words" to her through a small hole in her isolette. Immediately, she opened her eyes and fixed them on him for the entire length of the song. I'll never forget that.
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My mother has a beautiful voice and used to sing to us all of the time. She also encouraged us to sing. We all grew up with a love for music. When I was pregnant, I used to sing to the "baby," and after he was born, a lullaby and a story were always on the menu at bedtime. I still sing out loud around the house and sometimes my teenaged son will even join in. Anyone can sing. Singing is like almost everything: consistent practice brings results, and it brings immense satisfaction and emotional connection.
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It’s true; anyone can sing.
Mine have hit the tween years and are embarrassed when I sing — just as my sister and I yelled at my dad to stop.
Only maybe a song at bedtime please if I can’t sleep.
Or it’s occasionally fun to sing together in the car. No stop!
We recovered our love of family singing as soon as we lost our teenage awkwardness.
To this day hearing a stranger sing one of my dad’s favorites can reduce me to tears in public. “Shenandoah,” anyone?
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@Ace J Shenandoah was one of my father's (b. 1913 d.1982) favorites also, and it's one I sang to my sons and now sing to grandson, thinking of my father, who died before my son's were born.
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@Lisa"sons" - sorry for typo from autocorrect!
I cannot carry a tune, remember lyrics, hold a note, or anything like that. Yet, I enjoy entertaining those close to me with my limited musical capabilities. I even named my boat "Lyrical". I hope my talents will not distort my future grandchildren's musicality.
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I made up a song called My Baby Has Some Wet Pajamas (Tommy James & the Shondells Hanky Panky song) and sang it to all of my grandchildren while changing their diapers. They laughed and stared at my face the whole time. The older sister sang it with me to her baby sister, too.
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I sang songs to my grandaughter in several languages from the time she was born. Imagine my surprise when,at 10 months, she took my face in her tiny hands ( the kid knew how to charm me) and clearly said "sing to me in French, gramma "!
But her all time favorite was the good old English version of How Much Is That Dog in the Window? The arf arfs reduced her to a squirmy giggling little bundle.
She's 19 now and adopting a puppy. Wonder if the tiny pooch would like the arf arfs? My elderly dog loves Pony Boy with his name replacing pony.
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As a singer in choruses since childhood, I had a whole repertoire of lullabies to sing to my daughter when she was born. These were wonderful moments that we continued through elementary school. She told me recently how comforting the memory of those songs was when she went off to college. I hope to have a grandchild to sing to someday .. I am ready! Maybe I will seek out some babysitting in the meantime...
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One of my fondest memories is of my dad, gone now 12 years, crooning to my newborn daughter while he stared into her rapt face. He was known for his abominable singing voice, but even more shocking were the lyrics to the war ditty he was singing to my sweet baby: “roll me over in the clover yankee soldier; it felt so nice, let’s do it twice. Roll me over in the clover and do it again!”
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For several months now, my 8-month-old grandson never fails to light up at my versions of (I) All Together Now by the Beatles and, more eclectically, (ii) Der Fuehrer's Face by Spike Jones (no doubt because of the different voices and the "raspberry" sound effects). As he acquires more verbal comprehension, I will soon retire the latter until he is old enough to understand satire and irony.
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My husband, for reasons he says he can't explain, started singing "shake, rattle and roll" to our daughter when she was in the hospital. That song (along with the fight song from his college!) calmed her down, without fail, for the first 18 months of her life.
She's 22 months old now and will request songs by name. Favorites are everything from Elmo's Song to the theme from Oklahoma. If she's upset, inevitably she'll calm down if we just make up a song title she hasn't heard before and ask if she wants to hear it. "Do you want to hear the wookie wookie song?" "Yes!" Then we just make up a silly little tune and she calms down and listens. Amazing.
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Lovely article. Blessed be the YouTube lullabies.
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It works with puppies as well.
Back on Memorial Day Weekend I had to pick up a new Standard Poodle Puppy and I had to do it after working out of town all weekend with nobody else to ride along- for 4 hours with a 6 1/2 week old baby pup that had only known me for less than an hour.
What worked was singing to the baby while I drove. He settled and slept and all went well. He is well on his way (4 months) now at 17" at the Withers and well over 20 lbs.
Not sure we could have made it without the singing. Silly little children's songs or anything else that comes to mind. Maybe our dogs are babies that never grow up and move away.
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When my daughter was an infant, I made a tape of me singing for my mother to play when she babysat her....it would always calm grammie and baby down.
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Joni Mitchell's The Circle Game to my two kiddos. Though they much prefer their father's singing. He switches between Beatles "In my life" and Billy Joel "Lullabye"
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I help out with my two little grand daughters in Connecticut during tax season while my daughter-in-law works late. To help them sleep, I started singing verses of Galway Bay, the only lullaby-like song I could remember. A few nights before I returned to Puerto Rico, the two little ones joined me in perfect unison. It was such a sweet moment.
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I have horrified my colleagues with off key renditions of Twinkle Twinkle while suturing and performing spinal taps on countless babies and toddlers. I always loved it when someone would join in and make it a duet.
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I sang constantly to my two close in age children on our frequent hour and a half long car trips. I knew a lot of long story ballads and folk songs from listening to Joan Baez, Clancy Brothers, Peter Paul and Mary et al back in the sixties - including a zillion verses of Matty Groves! They were always attentive enough that it kept them from sibling bickering and sometimes soothed them into sleep. Also kept me awake remembering the next verse.
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Fascinating! I sang "IF I Fell," by the Beatles, when my newborn granddaughter was crying endlessly while my daughter went downstairs to do some laundry. I'll have to see if she remembers it!
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We commute every day 40 min each way with a 9 month old. She is fine playing and eating for about 25-30 min.
The rest of the way, I sing to her. Songs will stop any fussiness and she gazes at my eyes and mouth as I sing.
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Strangely, Sinatra's Strangers in the night put my grandchild to slumber. very sweet essay. thanks.
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When I was in kindergarten a very long time ago, teachers had pianos in the classroom. What a thrill when our teacher played and we sang and danced to children's ditties. That was considered an integral part of child development in those days, before children had the regimented curriculums of today. Before the era of emphasis on standardized tests, and before classroom walls were covered with visual stimulation without an inch of blank space.
I fondly remember a colleague who taught the third grade. She spent the last half hour every Friday of every week playing and singing with her class. It was so wonderful to walk the halls and hear the sounds of teacher and students singing in harmony and with such joy.
She would be called a dinosaur today and admonished about wasting precious test prep time.
Oh, the irony!
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This was my kindergarten experience as well! Wonderful. I recently re-read a newspaper article about a reporter's visit and was reminded how the teacher used musical cues for transitions.
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My colicky daughter has grown up to be a inclusion special ed teacher, and teaches 4th grade in a city school. The way you describe present day schools is somewhat inaccurate, and unkind to the majority of teachers of today.
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@Marjorie: sometimes the truth hurts.
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Just yesterday my five yr old granddaughter and I were at the pool singing away. We act more like we are in a musical so instead of talking we sing our words out, anything we are about to say gets a song..........it is so much fun.
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My little granddaughters like dancing in the kitchen to Barbara Ann (Beachboys) and a bedtime favorite is Moon River. Loved this article. Music is magical.
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Adults are often taken aback at the effectiveness of a deftly acted “Wheels On The Bus” rendition in quieting a baby. They shouldn’t be. Now legions of grandparents and experienced teachers are armed, not just with songs at the ready but with validation that this quiver has gotten what today’s parents insist on - research and study to back up any claims. Thank goodness we’re save
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