Well, I did it: I kept my son out of school on Friday even though he had two tests and a project due. And I hope I’m not getting him in trouble by posting on it.

Okay, so the truth is I arranged with his teachers to have him take both tests on Thursday, and hand in his portion of a team alegebra project the same day. So, the damage was minimal, if there was any at all.

But in the end I reasoned that he wouldn’t remember that day at school in years to come. He will, however, always remember our day: We went to the free Green Day concert at Central Park for the Good Morning American summer concert series.

Needless to say, it’s his favorite band, and pretty high on my list as well. And I can’t ask for a better day, nor a more fun outing for him (above). No, that’s not me on the right. I took the photo. (I still have a tad more “coverage” on my head—no offense to the man in the photo.)

Anyway, this has been a periodic judgement call for me, as it is for many parents, I suspect. I had the day off, so it was no issue on my end. But education is important, and occasionally parents may opt to keep the kid home. I handle it on a case-by-case basis, but it’s something I take seriously.

I spoke to a couple of other parents at the show who had done the same thing, and they had all made the same decision: That it was a treat worth cutting school for the day.

Is it something that can be abused? Certainly. I have friends who were periodically kept home from school for a “mental health day,” which I think is of limited value for most kids, depending on age and circumstances.

But the question is when do you think it’s okay to have your kid play hooky?

One final note on the show, it really was a treat. I’ve blogged on the music element of it on The Listening Room, our music blog. But for those that didn’t see it, here’s a clip from GMA:

Last year I took my son to his first “concert:” a performance by Ringo Starr and his all star band at Radio City Music Hall. This time we turned it up a notch.

The truth is my 11-year-old is a metal-head with a guitar teacher who is a Metallica nut. So I bit: Two weeks ago I took him to see Metallica at the Prudential Center in Newark, with ear-plugs in tow. Now, I think we’re fortunate to be in a situation where it’s common for my generation to have similar musical tastes with our children, simply because we grew up on rock. And, let’s face it, Metallica has been around long enough that it they were a big deal in my college and post-college days.

So we were able to share the experience. To me, it was a great bonding experience, similar to my view on video games. He and I play X-Box together all the time, which I enjoy as long as his schoolwork is done and we still put aside time to do more traditional recreational activities.

Still, I’ve had other parents express surprise that I would take my son to a heavy metal show and that I would devote so much time to playing video games with him. Is there a viewpoint out there that those things either cut into traditional parent-child relationships or are prematurely exposing kids to “older kid” activities?

Raffi, the Canadian artist whose music has been beloved by parents and children since the 1970s, was the No. 1 vote-getter in our poll on children’s musicians. Raffi received 12 out of 45 votes, or 27 percent. Some people might think of Raffi as strictly an artist who appeals to the toddler and preschool set, but I have to admit that I love him, too. While many of his songs are silly and simple, there are also songs that are surprising complex and sweetly touching — even to a jaded adult.

The No. 2 pick was tween-set sensation Miley Cyrus (11 votes; 24 percent). The write-in choice that argued “children can share adult artists, too” received eight votes, or 18 percent. Laurie Berkner (7 votes; 16 percent), Pete Seeger (3 votes; 7 percent), They Might Be Giants (2 votes; 4 percent) and John Farrell (2 votes; 4 percent) rounded out the results.

Thanks for voting!

Bring it on. My kid’s 10 and I figure it’s high time he got his first rock concert under his belt. After all he’s a little metal head like his dad, and is pretty crazy about Green Day and My Chemical Romance. I’ve even gotten him into Black Sabbath and Radiohead.

But, aside from his recording-artist uncle, he hasn’t really been to a live show yet. We’re changing that.

How to start? My first criteria was that he fare better than I did for my first concert. I was in seventh grade and they gave out promotional tickets for the old Westchester Premier Theater. The performer was country-crooner-turned-casino-act “Mac Davis,”:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ZNWz00R3Ng&feature=related with comedian Gabe Kaplan — in his pre-Welcome Back Kotter days — as the opening act.

It got better after that. Linda Ronstadt was next, and before you knew it it was Santana, the Allman Brothers, Kiss, etc. By my last year of high school, we were at the old Palladium on 14th Street almost every weekend, watching everyone from Van Halen to Twisted Sister, and whoever else showed up to play that day.

Now it’s my son’s turn. And it’s just going to be our own thing, as the other half of our blending family — my girlfriend and her little boy — will hold down the homefront for the night. For the two of us, I think it’s good bonding time in a “coming-of-age” kind of way, although I suspect other divorced and single parents do these kinds of things as some sort of compensation for time lost or something. To me, it’s really just a great thing to share with my son.

So, the first thing I sought in planning it was advice. The “Family Education”:http://www.familyeducation.com/home website offered a list of suggestions on “what to keep in mind”:http://fun.familyeducation.com/music-performances/family-time/36505.html in such a situation. Some of it was common sense, some of it was silly. But it was advice nonetheless.

The next step was, where to go? I actually considered the Van Halen show at Madison Square Garden tonight. But the Garden was never great on acoustics, is kinda big, and it’s hard to get close to the stage. Besides, decent tickets for this show would’ve run me about $300 a pop. So, that was out. As it is, I had just missed a golden opportunity to take my boy to the Garden: My Chemical Romance wrapped up their tour there on May 9, about one week before I got the rock concert bug in my head. Smaller venues were okay, but they’re mostly just glorified bars which are fine for me, but not for a 10-year-old.

Ultimately, I narrowed it to three sites, including the Beacon Theater and the Jones Beach Theater. The third was “Radio City Music Hall,”:http://www.radiocity.com and that’s where we’re headed. That’s not to say that we may not pick up additional shows at Jones Beach or the Beacon later this summer.

Finally, what show to catch? Here’s what we picked: “Ringo Starr’s All-Starr Band”:http://www.radiocity.com/events/ringo-starr.html at the end of next month. I mean, the guy’s a former Beatle, has fun on stage, and puts together a fun group of musicians every time he comes around. This year he’s playing with, among others, Edgar Winter, Billy Squier and Colin Hays from Men at Work. My son loves Winter’s classic, “Frankenstein,” and the rest of it will be kind of a trip for me, since I listened to some of those guys in my teens and 20s.

There are still all these tiny worries dancing around my head, from the show running too late, to someone blowing smoke in his face all night, to drunken behavior around us — all relatively minor issues to me in the larger scope of things. Mostly, I’m kind of excited myself to see any kind of show after several years without one.

So, how’d I do? I gotta think it’s gonna be a thrill for him to just be at a show, let alone for someone legendary like Ringo. I still have it in me to take him to something more hard-edged down the line, and particular would love one guitar hero or another, as my son is learning to play. But, for now, we’ll see how it goes with the Beatle.

My son’s trumpet blasts sounded like a wounded elephant writhing in pain when he first started playing an instrument in third grade. In fourth grade, he switched to the saxophone, and the elephant was healing. Now, in fifth, he’s developed quite a talent for it, and is visibly improving and enjoying his progress. It was all a matter of getting him over the initial hump of frustration — and continuing that progress. That’s kind of the problem.

The initial question for his mom and I was whether to let him give music a try in the first place. There are a number of tips lists online and in print, “including this one”:http://cnx.org/content/m11640/latest that serve as a guide for parents making the call. We didn’t consult a list at the time, although it would’ve been helpful. But my son had expressed an interest, and although we worried that he would decide not to stick with it, we let him go for it. I made it clear that he had to stick with it once he chose to do it, at least for the year. And some of his early practices took some prodding. But he stuck with it.

The problem is that practices are still an occasional hassle. He also started playing guitar last year, so there are two instruments to practice. I gave him the same speech for the guitar classes he takes, and he does practice. However, we have to force him to do so at times, and it makes me wonder if that defeats the purpose. I want him to want to practice, because I know the more he improves the more he will enjoy it. I’m going to start practicing guitar with him at least once a week, and perhaps that will help.

But is there a trick to this? Or do we just keep insisting on regular practices until it takes root as a regular routine?

My youngest son asks me to lower or, better yet, shut off the music in the car when we pull up to the dropoff point for his summer day camp. (I’m usually listening to rock, or blues, R&B, bluegrass or some combination of the preceeding. Or else jazz on WBGO.) Isn’t it great to know that your music embarasses your kid in front of his friends?

At age 12, my son doesn’t always get all the subtlety of music. For more nearly two years, he would confuse Bruce Springsteen, Paul Simon, Jerry Garcia and even Elvis Costello with Pete Seeger.

That stems from a dramatic tale about Bob Dylan’s legendary appearance at the Newport Folk Festival some four decades ago when he outraged traditionalists by performing with an electric band some. According to the Martin Scorcese PBS documentary Bob Dylan: No Direction Home, Seeger was so upset when Dylan unleashed his electric blues that the folksinger/activist wanted to cut the cable to the amplifiers.

Seeger denied that story in the film, but it was a powerful image. So powerful, that my son often asked “Is that the guy who wanted to cut the cable,” after a musician on TV or DVD.

Then last week, PBS broadcast a special on Pete Seeger and his long-running effort to clean up the Hudson River, Til the River Runs Clear. Seeger and a friend founded the Sloop Clearwater Restoration, with the aim of sending thousands of children and adults onto the Hudson in the hope that they would fall in love with the river – and then see the need to clean it up.

Near the end of the documentary, Seeger likened his role to the farmer in the Biblical parable who sows seeds on rock, a well-worn path and upon fertile soil, where finally the seeds sprout and grow. Seeger talked about all the kids who sailed aboard the Clearwater and wondered what would grow in them from the experience. “I’m a sower of seeds,” Seeger said. To which my son said: “That was a pretty good speech.”

I don’t think my son will confuse anyone else with Pete Seeger again.

Check out the cryptic screen at the right. That’s what my iPod looked like after Pumpkin swiped it from my desk when we weren’t looking. Suffice it to say, we were a bit boggled by this message. My husband has had an iPod since 2003 — and he NEVER saw this screen before. Who knew you could actually lock your iPod? After playing around with it for a couple days, we were ready to call Apple. Then a friend visited and fixed it in a matter of minutes. In an embarrassingly obvious way. (We felt somewhat better when we considered that he’s doing an internship at Google.) What technology has your child rendered nonfunctional?

I have to admit that when my son was born I never envisioned that, at 9 years old, he’d have “a favorite Matisse.” But he does, in fact, have a favorite Matisse (The Red Studio). He also tells me he’s very taken by the “presence of light” in Georges Seurat’s works, and how Edvard Munch’s body of work is more impressive than just his most famed painting (The Scream). He also has a favorite classical composer (Beethoven), largely because of the 9th Symphony, and particularly now that his guitar teacher has taught him to play the basic melody, or “Ode to Joy.” But he also likes George Gershwin.

What has helped fuel this latest fad is a children’s author “named Mike Venezia”:http://www.mikevenezia.com/mikevenezia who publishes a series of biographies that are fun, quick and informative. Venezia has focused in particular on composers, artists and presidents. I’d recommend them, even if they aren’t the only biographies out there. I find that kids are drawn to the idea of “a series” or “a collection” of things, be they books, cards, toys, etc. It has been a factor in this case. I’m sure there are other examples.

Either way, I find it’s valuable to encourage whatever your child takes an interest in, and take time to turn it into something more concrete. Make it into shared experiences. For instance, this weekend we took a trip to “Union Church”:http://www.hudsonvalley.org/unionchurch/index.htm in Pocantico Hills, which, as most of you know, features stained glass windows by Henri Matisse and Marc Chagall. The Matisse window didn’t replace “The Red Studio” as a favorite, but the visit was a hit, even if the folks at the church didn’t entirely know what to make of this half-pint kid who actually seemed to want to know more about the artwork.

Of course, I’m immensely proud of my boy. Not that I wouldn’t mind a Derek Jeter or Mickey Mantle comment here and there, but I am proud that he has taken a keen interest in history, and lately in art and music history. Both his mom and I have gone through great lengths to encourage him in whatever his interests are and have been, including in his own musical tastes. (Green Day was great; My Chemical Romance took some getting used to).

This is what parenting should be about. As in all things, it’s not always so obvious. I think we all know parents who push their kids in a different direction: Whether it be towards sports, towards books, whatever. And while I try to mix it up — we push for outdoor activities when the weather is beautiful — we let him dictate the activity when our weekends are coming up.

And I’m not giving up on Jeter and Mantle just yet. Truth is my boy could always hit, and he’s taken a keen interest in classic baseball movies of late: We watched Eight Men Out and The Natural this past weekend. Next weekend we’re going to get out there and practice some Roy Hobbs moves. We’ll take a Pablo Picasso biography along just in case.

Some special songs are not about love, sex, drugs or rock ‘n’ roll, but a result of the aforementioned – children. I’m not talking about songs to entertain kiddies, but songs that celebrate the arrival of children, that contain parents’ hopes for their offspring, and even those that record the less inspiring moments of parenthood.

I’m not sure if fewer of these songs are being written these days, or maybe it’s my disconnect from popular music. There was a time when almost every major singer-songwriter seemed to have a song on becoming a parent. The songs comprise an overlooked genre that we’re exploring now with the approach of Mother’s Day on Sunday and Father’s Day next month. Send me your favorites and maybe we can update this before Father’s Day.

Stevie Wonder’s “Isn’t She Lovely”:http://steviewonder.free.fr/html/song32.html is the only song here that could be described as a hit. It’s a short song, only three verses, and a great take on the first thrill of becoming a parent. The song opens with a baby’s wail and proceeds:

“Isn’t she lovely,
Isn’t she wonderful,
Isn’t she precious,
Less than one minute old
I never thought that we’d be
Making one as lovely as she.
But isn’t she lovely made from loveâ€?

Taking this chronologically, at least for the newborn, next comes “First Born”:http://www.songmeanings.net/lyric.php?lid=106939 by the Canadian songwriters and sisters Kate & Anna McGarrigle. The song covers a lot of ground and apparently was inspired by the birth of Kate’s son, singer Rufus Wainwright:

“Daddy’s buddies send the flowers,
Mother’s friends have baby showers.�

The McGarrigles can’t help but worry about the kid’s future:

“Some of them make it,
Some of them don’t.
Some of then can’t,
Others won’t grow up.�

But they decide that’s for the future and return to celebrate the growing boy:

“Yes’s he’s the first born son,
That son of a gun,
Just hates to walk,
Just loves to run,
Just as fast as he can
With life held tight,
In the palm of his hand.�

Long before he wrote movie sound tracks, Randy Newman was a wonderful writer of satirical songs. When he took on parenthood in “Memo to My Son”:http://www.lyricsdepot.com/randy-newman/memo-to-my-son.html it was with self-effacing humor.

“I know you don’t think much of me,
But some day you’ll understand.
Wait’ll you learn how to talk, baby,
I’ll show you how smart I am.�

Paul Simon’s view in “St. Judy’s Comet”:http://www.lyricsdomain.com/16/paul_simon/st_judys_comet.html is similar:

“Well I sang it once,
Then I sang it twice,
I’m going to sing it three times more.
I’m going to stay til your resistance is overcome.
‘Cause if I can’t sing my boy to sleep
Well it makes your famous daddy look so dumb.�

In “That was your Mother”:http://www.lyricsdomain.com/16/paul_simon/that_was_your_mother.html, Simon makes it clear that kids don’t always seem like a blessing:

“Well that was your mother,
And that was your father,
Before you was born dude,
When life was great,
You are the burden, of my generation,
I sure do love you,
But let’s get that straightâ€?

“The Marvelous Toy”:http://www.mydfz.com/Paxton/lyrics/tmt.htm by Tom Patxon is part of the kiddy music cannon, but it’s also a song about the connection between generations. It ends with Paxton presenting to his son his own favorite childhood toy and it’s easy to imagine his son passing it on, too. The song was written when Paxton was in the Army and forced into typing training.

“Well, the years have gone by too quickly, it seems,
I have my own little boy.
And yesterday I gave to him my marvelous little toy.
His eyes nearly popped right out of his head,
And he gave a squeal of glee.
Neither one of us knows just what it is,
but he loves it, just like me.”

I can t imagine a better pray for one’s child than Bob Dylan’s “Forever Young”:http://www.bobdylan.com/moderntimes/songs/forever.html. And for the record, it was written many years before an identically titled song by Rod Stewart.

“May your hands always be busy,
May your feet always be swift,
May you have a strong foundation
When the winds of changes shift.
May your heart always be joyful,
May your song always be sung,
May you stay forever young.�

Many of these songs may not be known by new parents, the most recent was released about about 20 years ago. So if you are of a younger generation – or older one, for that matter – tell me your favorite song about parenthood.