So you know, I'm a lover of all kinds of music. I honestly don't believe in censoring music for the benefit of the kids - I've always kind of considered it a form of art. Like, almost the same thing if my kid saw a nude painting or you know, that famous statue of the naked guy with the small penis. What is it, Michelangelo or something? I can't remember. ANYWAY I've always been very anti-censoring. Music, art, books, whatever. I pretty much feel like if it is relevant, or it isn't like blatantly obnoxious, I am fine with it. And if there is something that I do find offensive, I just don't put it out there to my kids. I'll just change the channel, turn the station on the radio, fast forward the tune. We parents have plenty of control over that crap.
On a similar note, I do not swear in front of my kids at all. We all know how much I love swearing, but I know my audience. And my audience is a very small one without children in it. Unless if you include the internet, because sometimes I forget about that audience.
Obviously, rap and hip hop always have a ton of swear words in their songs. I enjoy a some music from that genre, however I don't usually play it in the car with the kids because it really is very glaringly inappropriate. Every other word is a bad word, and you can't like, sing along at all without singing some version of Effing effity eff car, g.d. effing gun, em effing drugs, you get the point. Pretty much every other word is the F word. And I don't mean "fart."
Well, so even though I don't believe in censoring, I think I am pretty careful about avoiding the inappropriate tunes. I'm trying to keep my kids from sounding like a bunch of scuzzy dirtbags for as long as I can. It's usually about middle school around here before the kids try test out the swearing thing.
So anyway, I was driving Brooke to school today and it reminded me of a funny thing that happened a few years ago when Brooke and I were driving to elementary school. A song by Drake and Nicki Minaj came on - Moment 4 Life. It's pretty inappropriate, for sure. Normally I would have switched it, but I wasn't paying much attention because Brooke and I were talking about the field trip she was going on that day - she was so excited, she didn't shut her yapper the entire ride. The song seriously went right over my head, just kind of like light music was playing in the background.
So all of a sudden, Brooke stops mid-sentence and says "There are bad words in this song Mom." And I was like, "You know, there are some bad words in this song Brooke." And she goes, "Want me to tell you one of the bad words Mom? Fuckin'." And I cringed. And I was like, shit, how does she know the real F word is a bad word at 6 years old?? Thank you very much Nicki Minaj. So I don't act all shocked or freaked out because I kind of feel like if you make too much of a big deal about the bad words, those words suddenly become really attractive to a kid, just because they aren't supposed to say them. So I said, "Yeah, that's a really bad word - you're not allowed to say that." And she goes, "Yeah, like I couldn't just go into school and say, 'I'm going on a fuckin' field trip today' to my teacher, right Mom?"
And inwardly I was like, omg. Also, I felt a snitch proud that she completely used the eff word in context. High five! No, just kidding. Kinda. So I said, "No, no you can't say that word at school, or anywhere. You'll get in big trouble if you do because it's really inappropriate." And she goes, "Well what will happen?" And I said, "Bare hiney spanking." So she mulls it over for a second and goes, "I know Mom. I won't say it." At this point we've reached the crazy stupid drop off line at the elementary school, so I'm just about to kiss her goodbye and she stops and says, "Is 'wee' a bad word?" And I was like "Wee?" And she goes, "Yeah, like in the song it says 'smoke some wee.'" As in weed. As in pot. As in currently illegal drug.
Ugh. I definitely went straight home and switched around the playlists on my iPod. Hearing a sweet little innocent voice saying fuck and KIND OF saying weed, and grasping that they are bad things to say made me rethink the censoring of the music in front of little ears thing.
Because six year old kids have no business knowing about wee.
What do you think about censoring? I sometimes wish I could go back to that time. With one kid in college, one in high school and one in middle school, it seems like they all know about wee, AND all of the bad words.
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