Music to Raise a Fierce Child
Most children’s music makes me want to gouge my own eyes out with a ball point pen. Repeatedly. So if you’re like me, but you still want your kids to absorb some great messages about life, here’s a ferocious mix of clean and positive songs, to help you raise an awesome human. Guaranteed to put a smile on both parent’s and kid’s faces!
1/ Pick Up Your Pants - LaLa Tigers
So if you have kids and you’re not dead yet, this bad boy is for you. I mean seriously, the pants on the floor drives me insane and when they’re still all twisted up in the trousers? I wrote this in 5 minutes one night when one of my mates came round my house before a rare night out. She turned up with her head in her hands and said, “For the love of GOD, can you please just write a song that makes them pick their pants up off the floor!” I went straight to the piano, tequila in hand and Pick Up Your Pants was born. Works on partners too. Come see how it works here
2/ Daughter - Sleeping At Last
This song is exquisite. Lilting, moving and beautiful vocal, with so much depth it makes my ovaries ache. It says everything I want my children to know. That they matter, that they should reach for their dreams and that they have it all. In spades. What’s not to like?
3/ My Baby Just Cares For Me - Nina Simone
This song is just guaranteed to lift my heart no matter what. It’s simple. It’s elegant and it has me playing the piano on my steering wheel and and my kids singing it at the top of their voices all the way through. It’s also a rather lovely thing to think about my babies. They really don’t care about all that “grown-up” stuff, they just care about me, which is rather a wonderful thing to feel. Long may it continue.
4/ Freedom - Pharell Williams
The perfect mix of groove, epic sentiment and energy and it makes me want to go and live in Ibiza. I can’t not dance when this track comes on and it conveys everything I want my children to feel about life. That it is limitless. Play it loud and get your sway on. I can’t fault it.
5/ The Attitude is Gratitude - LaLa Tigers
Introducing the Law of Attraction to kids with music. Gratitude raises our energetic vibration and changes our perspective on life, but it also flips us into manifesting mode. As we drop off to sleep, our brains drop into a theta brainwave state, which is the easiest way to re-program our subconscious minds, or in our children’s case, build them. When we think about the big vision we have for our lives and then we attach an elevated emotion like joy or gratitude to it as we are just waking up, or dropping off to sleep. it can turn us into a powerful magnet for the life we desire.
6/ Just because it’s Different Doesn’t Mean It’s Scary - I’m from Barcelona
Hip, carefree and child friendly with an eclectic sound that all ages will love. If you like your music a bit more indie, then you’ll love this. Helping our kids understand that new things can be exciting can sometimes be a challenge, so anything that helps that is awesome in my book, but I’m pretty sure we can all learn a thing of two from these lyrics.
7/ Proud - Heather Small
Right back to the 90’s and it feels SO good. Heather Small’s voice and the message that you can be anybody you want, couldn’t be clearer. We all know what it feels like when we’ve wasted a day. Some days you feel great and other days, you wished you’d done more. You’ll never get to live today again, so let’s not waste a single second. “You could be so many people, if you make that break for freedom,” Now turn it up and think about what you could do today, to make yourself feel proud.
8/ The Garden of My Mind - LaLa Tigers
I want my children to understand that the space behind their eyes is where they grow their lives. That their mind was like a garden and that their thoughts were like seeds on the wind. I want them to understand that what they focussed on would expand in their lives and they they could choose which seeds they planted and that by watering them with their love and attention, they could grow the life they wanted. And as my kids generally don’t listen to me, I put it in a song. When I hear them singing it, I know my work is done. It’s in.
9/ Love my Life - Robbie Williams
We know that life is going to throw a whole load of stuff at our kids, right? But with feel good lyrics like this, they’ll always know that we’ve got their back and that this is how we want them to feel. Plus, if Robbie can sort his life out and write like this about himself, then there’s hope for all of us. I love everything about it.
10/ Four to the Floor - (Thin White Duke Mix) - Starsailor
I’m not sure if this one’s for the kids, or the parents. Okay, I am. It’s for the parents, but my kids love it too and they always ask me to turn it up, which feels like reason enough to make this list. My kids know their stuff. Brit pop band Starsailor in a house mix so good it’ll make your toes curl. It was also rated the 84th best track of the 21st Century in France in 2014. Not to be sniffed at.
Rachel Davis is the founder of musical educational platform LaLa Tigers, TEDx Speaker, author of the “Raise a Tiger’ Programme,” an NLP Practitioner, Hypnotherapist, musician and mother of two. Rachel ran music sessions for under 5’s in the UK for many years, but following her own profound experiences and the subsequent journey within, Rachel now combines the power of the mind with the awesome power of music, to increase confidence and wellbeing in families, whilst planting powerful seeds of limitless potential in the minds of the next fierce generation. https://www.lalatigers.com/
