Vigilance

DaddyHealy spends some time listening to Brazilian radio. It's interesting, good for language development, and he says the tunes are really catchy. I have to agree. It is not uncommon on a Saturday morning for him to be wandering around the house repeating 5 or 7 words of a song in Portuguese. D & M have also picked up on this. In fact, music here is very big. People love to sing and to dance. Karaoke is huge. At town festivals there is always an opportunity to get on stage and sing. As a result, we hear the same 2 or 3 most popular songs over and over across town on nights of festivals. At school the kids have music class, which sometimes includes songs similar to "The Wheels on the Bus" and "B-I-N-G-O", and sometimes it's a guy with a guitar taking requests and playing mainstream pop while the whole class sings along.

I like that there is no inhibition to use your talents (or in some cases, lack thereof), I like that boys dance at the school Christmas program without embarrassment. I am not sure I like that 4th grade girls have MP3 players and cell phone ring tones of the most popular songs on the radio. And I know I don't like that M came home from school this week singing one of the most popular songs. She said she learned it on the merry-go-round. It is tempting to be thrilled...."She's learning Portuguese!" But the prudent parent in me knows better. D is 6 and M is 4. I want to know what they are singing.

So, we spent the morning googling and translating the lyrics of the 2 songs that have most captured the attention of our children. It's not great, it's not terrible either. It's no different than what they might be singing from American radio. They don't understand the meaning of the lyrics, they probably wouldn't understand the meaning even if it were in English. But that doesn't change how I feel about my daughter singing, "The prettiest girl walked in front of me and I got closer and started to say, Delicious, Delicious, I swear you're going to kill me, I'm going to get you..."

I am not naive enough to believe this wouldn't be a problem in the US as well, but here it is easier to overlook because you don't completely understand the lyrics nor the nuance. It takes more vigilance.