My husband and I have four kids, ages 5-13, and it feels to me like we’ve reached the golden age of family music appreciation. I can get nostalgic about the simpler days of Raffi and Lori songs—although no one is ever too old for Raffi and Lori songs—but these days it’s so fun to discover and listen to music together. We make playlists for sing-alongs in the car or kitchen—or groan-alongs when musical tastes conflict. We sit in church together while the organ postlude vibrates through our bodies and the space (and some of the kids groan along to this too).

I like watching my kids’s taste develop as they pick up songs from outside sources, although that has its challenges. Sometimes a new song doesn’t line up with my own idea of what makes good music. A wise sister-in-law said that when her kids are consuming media she doesn’t prefer, she tries to find out what they like about it. Maybe I don’t like the overuse of pitch correction in a pop hit my daughter likes or the heavy bass in my son’s latest earworm, but when it’s not a moral issue, I think of my sister-in-law and try to be curious rather than critical.

But what if music my kid wants to listen to contains content I don’t want blasted through the house? For younger kids, I’ll offer an explanation of why a song isn’t going to get airtime. Sometimes a simple “it’s not respectful to women” or “it breaks a commandment” is enough, but if a child has questions or objections, that’s a great time to talk about family boundaries. 

For older kids who’ve earned my trust, it’s a case-by-case basis. If a big kid wants a song on a personal playlist, I’ll allow some mature content after a talk about how responsible people can encounter a word or idea without adopting it or passing it on to, say, younger siblings. Eventually they’ll grow into young adults with access to radio, apps, and internet, so I’m trying to help my kids learn discernment.

If a song doesn’t make the parental cut, we’ll talk about why and how art can be a powerful vehicle for messages. This passage from Arcana Coelestia helps me approach these conversations:

“There are also the pleasures of the senses: as the pleasure of hearing, which is in general that from the sweetness of music and song.… These kinds of pleasures, being felt in the body, are called pleasures of the body. But no pleasure ever exists in the body unless it exists and subsists from an interior affection, and no interior affection exists except from one more interior, in which is the use and the end.” (994.2) 

Our approach to technology is an ever-evolving one, and I’m interested to hear how other parents approach it. For younger kids who want to listen to music by themselves, my husband and I have loaded music onto old iPods or iPod Shuffles. For older kids, we’re exploring ways to allow some freedom without throwing the doors to the internet wide open. What’s working at the moment is the Spotify app on a couple of Android phones, which I’ve restricted with Google Family Link. Big kids can build playlists and show them to an adult for approval. On airplane mode, the phones can access downloaded music without getting suggestions from an algorithm. 

I’d love to hear how other families approach music curation, so comments are welcome. In the meantime, here’s a Spotify playlist of some songs we’re listening to these days.