When it comes to exposing children to another language there is nothing better than songs. Nursery rhymes are not only very popular with young kids, they are also educational and they lay the foundations for learning in toddlers and preschoolers. What happens when children grow up and feel nursery rhymes are not for them anymore? In our case, we are not there yet but we are moving in that direction.  My son at 7 is at the delicate age when one day he is all cuddly and likes singing along to his favourite nursery rhymes and the next he is all independent almost preteen like and into pop music. Ever since Michael Jackson’s sudden death, young children have discovered the king of pop and are fascinated by him just like we were back in the eighties. I am not alone in experiencing the rebirth of Thriller and some of the most iconic Michael Jackson’s songs to the point that I know them better now than back when they came out not through choice of my own, but for a child who is discovering a new passion.

Children go through fads and while they are in the middle of one nothing else matters, they don’t tire of playing the same game over and over again, just like they find the same joke funny even if they have heard it one too many times, it is the same when it comes to music.

Last summer we went from listening repeatedly to Bob Dylan’s Romance in Durango – trying to pass on my taste in music here – which was then sadly replaced by Shakira’s Waka Waka and now it is the turn of Thriller. The positive part of his new found passion is the actual attention to the lyrics, which he learns by heart by reading them first and then practicing without the prompt. The fact that English is my son’s second language has helped our bilingual journey as the range of products available to us is vast and when it comes to music there is a whole wonderful world to discover and we haven’t even scratched the surface yet.