Lullabies: Do Sad Country Songs Count?

I sing sad, degenerate country songs to my kids. Is that bad?

It all started when R was three months old. Beast Wife and I started to “sleep-train” him, our eyes fixed on the glorious promise of a baby who slept through the night. Our guide was “Moms on Call,” a simple, to-the-point, if rather draconian, reference book. A project manager at heart, I absorbed the detailed schedules they showed for every stage. The rest of it reads like the instruction manual you wish the hospital gave you on your way out the door with your baby. For sleep-training, the first step, per Moms on Call (MOC), is to soothe the baby into a trance-like, pre-sleep state with your best dad or mom skills. (A fan of the Five S’s from The Happiest Baby on the Block by Harvey Karp, I was prepared to swaddle and shush with the best of them). After about 15 minutes, you place the kid in his crib awake (or wake him up, if he’d fallen asleep). Then you leave and don’t come back in the room, blood-curdling screams be damned. The next time you put the kid to sleep, you step through the same 15 minute process. Whether it’s the middle of the night, the middle of the day, or when you just can’t take the screaming anymore, you’re committed for 15 minutes before you can put that kid down guilt-free.

15 minutes is a long time.

During my first attempt at the MOC procedure, I sat there in the dark. The wooden rocking chair dug into my back. Half bent-over and slouched at the same time, I had contorted my body into what I hoped was the most luxurious, La-Z-Boy armchair R could imagine. Time to wait for the allotted 15 minutes.

My first problem was that it was dark. I had no idea what time it was. When was 15 minutes up? I had no clue.

My second problem was that, sitting in the dark, rocking and shushing, is boring. Reallllly boring.

It was time for a lullaby.

I knew that singing to a baby was a good thing. I had seen the “Talk, Read, Sing” billboards around LA, after all. An infant’s mind craves stimulation. Many future cognitive outcomes for kids correlate to the number of words they hear before they’re 5-years-old (listen to the Freakonomics Podcast, Episode 248, titled “Does ‘Early Education’ Come Way Too Late?” for some interesting data on the topic, one of my first exposures to it). So here was my chance to kill three birds with one epic song: grow precious dendrites in my infant son’s brain, lull him into the perfect, all-night sleep state, and distract myself from the pain in my back.

But I had nothing. I could not think of a single song. I sat in silence, willing my aching back to 15 minutes. With nothing else to do, I thought about what a bad parent I was. “No lullabies, bro? Seriously?? You should’ve prepared for this. What were you doing the past 10 months??” After 5, or perhaps 60, minutes of self-loathing, I placed the baby in his crib like he was a Looney Tunes stick of dynamite, tip-toed outside, closed the door, and let out a sigh. Still standing outside his door, I Googled “lullabies.”

Later that night, I was ready. Equipped with “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star,” I was almost looking forward to the middle of the night, zombie feeding session. Once R woke up and ate, I swiped him with purpose from Beast Wife, swaddled the drowsy lump like a Boss, and nestled back into my La-Z-Boy impression on the rocking chair. I started to sing….

And then I was done.

30 seconds. That’s how long it took me to sing Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. At that rate, I’d be wondering about that diamond in the sky 30 times before I could get out of that room. Could I make it through 120 Twinkles without losing my mind? I didn’t want to find out. After about 10, I called it quits, put the baby down, and got the hell out of there.

I learned that, by design, nursery rhymes and lullabies are short and repetitive. Kids have short attention spans, respond well to patterns, and are comforted by familiar melodies. Old MacDonald. The Itsy Bitsy Spider (which sounds oddly similar to Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, by the way). Ring Around the Rosy. These songs have endured the test of time for a reason. And that reason is not passing the time or entertaining a sophisticated, adult mind like mine. I was troubled.

I went back to Google the next day to start filling my mental library with enough 30-second songs to make it to 15 minutes. But I had another problem: I didn’t want to learn more lullabies. Hush Little Baby? You Are My Sunshine? Frere Jacques (did I spell that right? It’s not even in English!)? With so much on my new parent to-do-list, my patience and I were already spread thin. Do I spend the precious downtime between feeding, diaper changing, sleep-training, and cleaning to learn these boring songs so I have more lullaby material? Is my son’s future enough of a motivator for me to power through 30-90 minutes of mind-numbing nursery rhymes per day? I remained troubled.

I was listening to a country radio station in the car one day when a solution hit my ears like a sweet, honky-tonk melody. “Millionaire” by Chris Stapleton came on and I thought, “Man, I love this song. I should learn it so I can sing it in the car.” Wait… what if I practiced singing that song for, say… 15 minutes, 4-5 times a day?

Stoked, I retired Twinkle Twinkle Little Star for the time being. R was in for a treat. As a burgeoning country music fan, I had a long list of songs I loved but didn’t quite know yet. Now, they were all on R’s naptime playlist. He had no choice but to listen as I stumbled through the lyrics, and I’d have no choice but to learn them. The lucky little cowboy got a steady, aural diet of Johnny Cash, Merle Haggard, George Strait, Chris Stapleton, and even Hootie and the Blowfish (because me and my 10-year-old self both love us some Hootie). Here are the songs that have emerged as my top country “lullabies:”

10 “Lullabies” That I Actually Like Singing

• Long Black Veil (Lefty Frizzell)
• Let Her Cry (Hootie and the Blowfish)— The perfect song for sleep training! I know, not country per se, but post-Hootie Darius Rucker is a country superstar, so it fits. I miss you, Hootie….
• Even If I Wanted To (Jason Aldean)
• The Bottle Let Me Down (Merle Haggard)— Positive message for your kid if they’re having trouble weaning and moving on to a big boy cup.
• Whiskey and You (Chris Stapleton)— Another song about a bottle.
• He Stopped Loving Her Today (George Jones)
• Cover Me Up (Jason Isbell)— Bedtime theme (among others).
• I Can Still Make Cheyenne (George Strait)
• Don’t Take Your Guns to Town (Johnny Cash)
• Fire Away (Chris Stapleton)

Only a few short weeks later, I knew all of these songs and could sing them loudly and confidently in my car. R was successfully sleep-trained. I looked forward to sitting in the rocking chair in the dark. Missions accomplished. When K started his sleep training earlier this year, I had my library of country lullabies queued up and ready for him, along with a few new ones to try out. It felt great. But… did I get that all wrong? My old friend, parental doubt, crept in. Did I totally screw this up? Am I leading my boys astray with a derelict taste in music? Are the common themes of heartbreak, drinking, and regret forever etched on their psyches?

Crap.

Back to Google to find out. My first handful of hits were a bit discouraging. Most centered on the importance of finding songs that are “appropriate” for kids (as if the macabre classics, Ring Around the Rosy and Rock A Bye Baby, are appropriate). Uh oh. I dug deeper.

Songs for infants should be simple and repetitive. Now I was getting somewhere. The simplicity of country music was EXACTLY why I liked it so much! It chills me out. What can be simpler for my boys to hear as they’re drifting into a nice, lengthy nap than tales of the simple life? Rolling down dirt roads. Enjoying tasty beverages (ya know, like milk). Sitting still, thinking about life, your mind wandering through all the shoulda-beens and ones-that-got-away that torment your dreams. How comforting!

Finally I ended up where any self-respecting, frantically Googling parent does: with an article that validates the choices I’ve already made and makes me feel better about myself. In this article, by Perri Klass, M.D. for the New York Times titled “In Lullabies, a Chance for Parent and Child to Bond,” Dr. Klass writes that “Singing helps calm both the baby and the parent… and creates a bedtime ritual to signal a transition from the day’s activities.”

Singing helps calm both the baby and the parent. And nothing calms me like a sad, slow country song about someone that is having a much worse day than me. In my experience, a calm parent is a better parent. I think my approach checks out.

My country conclusion fits with a practice I adopted this year while adjusting to my frenetic, stay-at-home dad (SAHD) schedule. After a family dinner to cap off a long day watching the boys, I found myself dreading the bath and bed routine, the last task that stood between me and the freedom of a quiet household. Most days, emotionally worn out and far from calm, I would give our baby, K, a practical, quick bath, mostly in silence. But wait…what about “Talk, Read, Sing?” Why don’t I sing to him during bath time? Nowadays, I prop up my phone on the bathroom floor, avoiding the stray hairs and wet spots, tune into a well-trained, country-ass Pandora station, and sing myself back home to a calmer, more present, and more enjoyable bath. My bath time Pandora sing-a-long is my escape at the end of those long, SAHD days. And hopefully K is getting smarter too in the process, even if his curriculum is “Drunk on a Plane” or “Whiskey Glasses.” If that’s true, I do believe I’ve discovered a Bro Dad Cheat Code.

My next question: at what age DO the lyrics actually matter? Any lyrics will do for babies, as far as I can tell. But my 3-year-old, R, understands many words now. Worse, he repeats them. His current favorite songs, thankfully, are wholesome: “This is Halloween” (The Nightmare Before Christmas Soundtrack), “Life is a Highway” (Rascal Flatts, Cars Soundtrack), and “Halftime (Stand Up and Get Crunk)” (Ying Yang Twins). Well, two out of three ain’t bad.

I’ll leave the appropriate music for toddlers question for another day, like the inevitable day when he tells his preschool teacher that he’s crunk, or that beer never broke his heart. For now, I remain confident, validated, and proud to be a Country Lullaby-Singing Bro Dad, so I’ll hang onto that. If you’re a dad, or a mom, sing whatever you want to your babies. Sure, you can sing the classics. But it’s most important to sing something. Better yet, for the sake of your mental health, your cortisol levels, and your quest for calm parenting, sing something you like. Especially if it’s the Ying Yang Twins. Sing it loud. From the window to the wall.