Just before tea most days, you'll find me back in the 1980s, feeling like I'm twirling in a pink puffball dress, my T-bars clomping to shiny synthesisers and big, doofy drums. My hands stretch down to two chubby little paws, and a little boy in dungarees smiles daftly at his mum.
This is my favourite time of day. I connect my iPad up to the speakers, and turn Spotify on. A few bursts of Wheels On The Bus and the theme tune to Postman Pat's Special Delivery Service later, and 21-month-old Evan is subjected to his daily pop disco.
The best thing about having kids, in my opinion? Being able to act like a kid again.
It was while I was pregnant, watching all my friend enjoying music with their little ones, and while Evan was tiny, that I got thinking about how we want to share music with our children. While every other hour seemed dedicated to bum-wiping, burping and bibs, listening to pop songs on the radio became a comfort and a tonic that reminded me of the wider world.
In my brightly-coloured book for pre-school children, Pop!, I write about how pop music is a liberating, life-giving thing. It's also incredible to sing, dance and dress up - to identify with songs that teach us about the world, and to explore our identities through interesting, flamboyant pop stars, such as David Bowie, Madonna, the Pet Shop Boys and Kylie.
We begin this sharing of music at baby singing classes, of course. I've done them all and could happily never hear Wind The Bobbin Up again. But sharing our own favourite songs is a very different thing. As someone who writes about music for broadsheets and women's magazines, and has DJ'd several times at the brilliant Big Fish Little Fish mini-raves, I'm a pop geek, that's true – but I also know when us parents have to give our kids room. So here are my tips for introducing your little people to pop.
- Don't worry about curating highbrow choices. Yes, we live in a world where Bach to Baby concerts and the like introduce our kids to high culture, and we grew up making uber-cool mixtapes or playlists for our friends. Children work rather differently. I found this out in my late teens, after making my much younger brother a tape that had Joy Division and Leonard Cohen on it (the poor boy returned his Smurfs' album tout-suite). There's just as much nourishment to be found in the sound of a man singing "awopbopaloobop awopbamboom!", so start with bouncy pop hits full of silly lyrics, noises and voices. There's Little Richard's Tutti Frutti, Millie's My Boy Lollipop ("you make my soul go...GIDDYUP!"), Hot Butter's Popcorn (lots of funny bleeps), and Trio's Da Da Da (the gobbledygook title speaks for itself). Serious nerd parents, take note: this also introduces them to rock and roll, reggae, '70s electronica, and '80s German pop.
- If your children are into specific things, play songs you like that share their subjects. For instance, my friend's son Sam was obsessed with trains as a toddler. He quickly got similarly obsessed with Kraftwerk's Trans-Europe Express quickly, and later enjoyed Kraftwerk's The Robots – he found the band's robotic voices funny, and the melody perky. Ta-da! He spent all his downtime wanting to watch their videos on YouTube. A nice break from Thomas for his parents, certainly.
- Don't limit what you play. Evan's dad likes weirder, electronic music, which he still played while on dad duty when Evan was little – some of it not unlike the white noise that used to blare over our son's cot. That's a sound Evan still likes, so your kids' tastes might surprise you. His latest favourite to cheekily stick his tongue out to? Lazarus by David Bowie. Me neither.
- Remember that being a good parent is about being happy yourself, too. If you've had a rubbish day at work, and playing Neneh Cherry's Buffalo Stance out loud would make things better after the nursery run – it always makes things better – then do. (Evan responded to this one with a twirl.)
- But also don't be sad if your children don't like everything you play. They'll like what they like, whether that be the Postman Pat theme (God forbid) or whatever's high in the charts (I've already heard myself shouting "That's not music!" at the telly like my mother did). My playlist (which you can find here) contains a selection of songs that inspired Pop!, as well as tracks from the stars nodded to in it, and it's full of songs I've enjoyed alone, as well as with little ones. Let it inspire your own. Then grab a moment in the day, pump up the volume, grab those paws. Whatever happens, I guarantee pop will lift you up.
. Listen to a single Stevie Wonder track and then tell me it doesn't have as much depth as a classical piece ...