Your children are just not that sophisticated.

By Pam On April 17, 2012 · Leave a Comment

I was at a kid’s party and Teenage Dream came on the Sirius XM pop station. Surveying the room, the seven years olds were singing let you put your hands on me in my skin-tight jeans as free and easy as the Spongebob Squarepants theme. One of the mom’s was outraged by the overt sexual nature of the lyrics. “This music is entirely inappropriate,” she said, her face contorted with judgment, as if the kids not only understood the machinations of baby-making and the implications of pubescent lust, they were colluding with Katy Perry’s fantasy to have the same happen to them.

Have no fear all you terrified moms out there who are trying to dissuade your children from becoming prematurely worldly, your child has no idea the conotation of those words, seemingly blurted all over the airwaves. It’s just a tune.

Think back to the songs you were bopping to when you were eight, even twelve –seriously, listen to the lyrics on the old school or classic rock stations, you’ll be OMG! That’s what he was saying? What a perv. I’m just now getting what Robert Plant was grinding about and it’s been forty years on loop. And what of the urbane themes — Michael Jackson or Prince anyone? My point is, put a beat to it and the truth of their poetry is lost on the general populace.

Rest assure, you’re kids will figure “it” all out in the same time you did, when they’re on the other side of paying a mortgage. In the meantime, as we say in the writer’s room, don’t hang a lantern on it. There’s enough to torment yourself with: running with scissors or setting the house on fire to start. If you’re visibly shocked over a Maroon 5 ditty, they will only demand an explanation. I can already picture their glazed over faces as you try to explain yourself out of that one.

Pam Alster, former stand-up comedienne, Lifetime TV writer & suburban mom brings a decade of living on the dark side to light in her forthcoming debut novel Robin’s Blue. www.pamalster.com