Inappropriate children’s songs

Now that Kai is begin­ning to learn and mimic, we are start­ing to be more mind­ful of the songs we sing to him. Espe­cially children’s songs.

On our banned wagon now is the French ditty Alou­ette, which we thought was about a skylark.

It is about a sky­lark, and the cruel thing (pluck­ing its feath­ers) the singer does to it.

The song gets really awful at the end, when the singer goes:

And your neck
And your back
And your wings
And your feet
And your tail
O-o-o-o-oh
Alou­ette, gen­tille Alou­ette
Alou­ette, je te plumerai
Sky­lark, I shall pluck you

The other song we’re con­sid­er­ing either ban­ning or chang­ing the lyrics of is the Chi­nese children’s song called “Ke Ren Lai Kan Ba Ba” (There’s a vis­i­tor to see Daddy), in which the child sings:

A vis­i­tor came,
To see Daddy.
Daddy was not home.
I invited the vis­i­tor in and asked him to sit
And gave him a cup of tea

I know, right? WTF? You’d smack your kid if he did that. He could’ve let in Jehovah’s Wit­nesses, debt col­lec­tors, trav­el­ling sales­men, NEA inspec­tors even if he didn’t let in crim­i­nals or something!

So we’re chang­ing the lyrics to some­thing (I’ll get Naomi’s mum to trans­late it back to Chi­nese) like:

When a vis­i­tor comes
And says he’s look­ing for Daddy
And Daddy’s not home
I’ll tell him Daddy said get lost
See this cup of tea?
It’s hot and will scald your face
If you don’t step away right now.