Why Dads are Good for Kids

Nigel’s mummy has given me a CD, a CD from a class they take together, a CD which Nigel loves and love and loves to listen and listen and listen and listen to at home and in the car and in the stroller and in the mall and…

You all understand, I’m sure.

Thankfully, I don’t mind it at all. We listen to all sorts of music over the course of a week, and there’s a place for this type, too. It’s very simple, and extremely repetitive, but that’s appropriate to the age its target audience. It’s not frenetic, like so many things aimed at kids. (And the kids on the disk? They can actually sing!) It is blissfully glitz-free. It’s a happy, clear, clean, peaceful little disk, full of gentle, peaceful, harmonious energy. I like it.

And Nigel loves, loves, loves it. He points to the disk propped on the mantlepiece.

“Want ‘hello, evweebuddy, so nice-a see you’!!” Which is the theme of the first track. It doesn’t stop there, though. Nigel knows the entire disk so well that that in the pauses between tracks, he announces the next song in anticipation.

After the first track ends, he turns to Malli. “Biddybiddy bum.” (The second track is “Biddy Biddy”.)

After the third track, “John a wabbit yes ma’am.” (“Oh, John the Rabbit”.)

After the fifth track (which was “bangabangabangabang”), comes “Sea Shells”. Which he sings very well – tone-matching in a just-turned-two! Not bad at all.

“That was good singing, Nigel,” comments my sweetie, who is home today.

“Yeah, Stephen!” Nigel agrees.

We hear –
“dis twain a gwoh-wy” (this train is bound for glory);
“kookabuwwa gum twee”;
“nee-noe” (Spanish song, including ‘nino’);
“sloooowly, slooooowly, snai-ww”;
“baaah, bah”;
“you comes back” (nice reassuring song about how “whoever takes care of you comes back, because they do love you”);
“skippin- down-a stweet” (Rig-a-jig-jig.)

But it’s his introduction to the 23rd track which brings down the house. The twenty-third track, “Everybody Loves Saturday Night”. In the silence before track 23, Nigel looks to the audience and announces…

“Ev-wee-buddy loves-a laugh at-a mime!”

I detect a father’s influence…