playing a Nat King Cole song on Spotify, and my 11 year old just started looking at the laptop with a look of horror on her face. I asked her did she not like it, and her reply was 'why would you think that I'D like something like THAT'?!.

>>Obviously he just wants Dad to be on side, same way I tried to get my parents to listen to the softer side of the music I was into at the same age - eg "nice" Beatles songs, Simon and Garfunkel, ELP (look - they play Mussorgsky! Copland! etc).

I remember subjecting my Dad-a lifelong Stravinsky, Britten, Ravel etc man-to what must have been the Xmas '78 Friday Rock Show listeners top 10 (Freebird, Layla, Smoke, Stairway, Supper's Ready, Xanadu, Starship Trooper etc etc) on a long car journey. This would now be banned under the Geneva convention. With hindsight I am amazed I wasn't turfed out and told to hitch back to Hampshire ...

Although he did allow that the sax on Shine on you Crazy Diamond was quite nice ... (and actually likes the Beatles and the Police, and Marshall Hain). My late mother's great phrase was "has this got many verses ?"

music argument with my daughter (2 and a half). It goes as follows:

"No, we have listened to the "Something Special" album twice in a row and if I have to listen to "Balamory - The Songs" as well, I swear I will deliberately drive this car off the road."

I listen to (taking my last.fm top 3 artists) Belle and Sebastian, Tindersticks and The Beatles. My Mum likes Lemar, Usher and Ne-Yo. I tried to find some middle ground by getting her to listen to Lewis II by Lewis Taylor...

...she didn't like it.

does not like the wiggles' dorothy the dinosaur song.

I do. After all, what's not to like?

...is mostly influenced by her mother (so far), so it's Britney, Girls Aloud, etc. at the moment. If this continues, undoubtedly there will be father-daughter musical warfare. There is a glimpse of hope though; she likes The Horrors 'Scarlet Fields' and, rather worryingly, Brian Jonestown Massacre's 'If Love Is The Drug, Then I Want To OD'.

Do we have to have Abba Gold/Abba the Definitive Collection cds one and two AGAIN in the car, or very loudly in the front room. Last car trip saw very limited success with the Beat's greatest hits and B-52s Wild Planet (I like the singing but the songs aren't as good).

The other day I mentioned to my daughter that - hint - if I got the new Beatles remasters for Christmas, I would give her all my old Beatles CDs; convinced that she would be overwhelmed by such a generous pledge to her upbringing. She said thanks, but she's not all that bothered. I mean, at the end of the day, The Beatles are just so overrated - no they're not, I said, they're underrated: ready to show her the Word articles, even read them to her out loud - and she went on to say that they were a bit, well, bland. Her direct quote - and I will never (let her) forget this - was that they were "just four guys singing".

Unfortunately, myself and every adult I've shared this with now just patronisingly nod to each other and say that one day she'll get it. And I dislike myself a little for that.

She told me to go and listen to 'Homecoming' by The Teenagers on Spotify. I did. And I'm still too much in shock to include a link.

I liked pop and rock music (and still do). My dad liked jazz. Despite growing up in the 60s, he does not have a single LP that was typical for that period. So we always inhabited completely different musical universes.

He does live in the vain hope that I might get interested in jazz. However, with the exceptions of John Coltrane and Miles Davis, I haven't.

His single, sole concession to rock and pop is Steely Dan, who he loves. Probably because their music has a big undercurrent of jazz.

I'm also having an arguement with my daughters about the Beatles but it's the other way around. I really don't want to listen to the "Yellow Submarine" album in the car yet again but it's all they want to listen to.

It's getting so bad that it's making me think twice about the 9th of September.

Son replies "OK Dad, just after The Simpsons finishes".

Dad says "Now"!

This happens every feckin' day.

When my son was 17, I noticed that Pet Sounds had disappeared, plus the Led Zeppelin Remasters and a Hendrix Compilation soon after I bought them. I hadn't listened to that stuff for years, so he must have got into it by osmosis, in the womb, or via MTV/VH1/Kerrang.

As an aside, when we first got Sky, would you believe it only had one channel -Kerrang (or so you might think). He developed a liking for Bob Marley as well. I bought him a copy of Red by Black Uhuru but he has never played it.

I bought the Streets and never got that back, plus he developed a liking for Bowie when he was 18. Whilst at Uni, he got into metal big-time and I found out that he was playing bands like Boston, Kansas etc. from 80s to whom I wouldn't have given house-room, although he was still listening to loads of indie stuff, The Smiths and bits of Drum/Bass. He has a liking for Thin Lizzy and latterly, both he and my wife have become big Rush fans.

Where we do differ is on World music, which he sees as a trendy fad and dismisses out of hand. However, I know that he has attended the odd Ceilidh and folk-music sessions!

I think he indulges my liking for Country and Americana, plus forays into jazz/fusion. We all share a liking for Henry Rollins spoken word stuff.

...say their kids are mad about Mamma Mia! and Abba. Boys, girls, varying ages. They're even naming pets after the characters. Parents have been tracking down Abba cassettes on eBay for God's sake. They're all crazy about it.

Is this your experience?

Perhaps Mamma Mia! is this generation's Grease.

My Dad, used to play the Beatles Red tape to keep me and my brother quiet on our regular schleps to the Lakes. Once he put in the Beatles Blue tape. As the now unmistakeable Mellotron of Strawberry Fields came through the speakers bearing no resemblance to unrepentent three part harmonies with added sixths my nine year old self remonstrated: "Dad, this is not the Beatles". He gave me the cassette case bearing a heavily bearded Lennon et al which I gazed at in wonder, and then I listened, hard.

The moral is, get 'em when they are young...

...for our yearly outing. They've got their own band and are writing songs but each time she brought out her guitar it was Tears In Heaven - "where did you hear that?" trying to get an insight into how they find music. "Everyone knows that duh!"
A few bars of Big Yellow Taxi - I'm thinking she knows it from the cover versions - "do you know who wrote or sang it?" "Yeah that hippy woman with the long hair and dresses."
At least they're listening.Tried playing Neil Young but they fell asleep put Glasvegas on and it was requested later in the holiday as that Scottish band we couldn't understand.

is that my kids - girl, just 7 and boy, 4 - both love "Jordan: The Comeback" by Prefab Sprout.

Whatever else I get wrong as a parent, I'll have done one thing right

...my family together, cutting some rug on the living room floor, is "High School Musical". My lot, (Me, 39, wife, 37, eldest girl, 7, boy, 5, youngest girl, 2) all love it. Good tunes, corny lyrics, and a good mix of up tempo and slower numbers.

Perfect.

it's been Michael Jackson morning noon and night for my kids. And for most of their friends, come to that.

On the one hand, I know that any arguments with my children over music are going to be pointless, so tend to avoid them - children will always tend to look for music that is their own and not their parents, so will resist all attempts to pursuade them to listen to what you think they should listen to - it's probably patronising to do that, in any case.

On the other, having an argument about it seems to be healthy(e.g. saying 'I don't know why you listen to that rubbish' even if you don't really mean it) and will probably please most children, as it will confirm that they are listening to music that their parents don't 'get', so the generation gap will appear to be maintained.

I always avoid pretending to like stuff my children like, as this always seems a bit desparate. The best moments come when one of them says they like a particular song they've heard somewhere, in a film usually, and I pull the relevant CD off the shelves and say 'of course, I've had this for ages'. For example, in School of Rock, when the shy girl belts out 'Chain of Fools', I was able to play them Aretha's version, and they've loved her ever since.

I remember when i was younger and my Dad would take us out for a drive and he would always play his Johnny Cash/Willie Nelson tapes in the car and i would try to play my Costello tapes.He won and looking back he was right.

Having tried to coax and cajole my niece about not pushing her songwriting she answers in her own way.

...will flick between music channels and never, ever, watch a song all the way through

If I comment about anything, I get one of the following :-

You are so uncool
You are so old
You know nothing

I work for a record company.............

will only listen to The Ting Tings!

We have to dance to it while she screams out the lyrics to That's Not My Name at full volume.

If I try anything else, she gets very annoyed. I've tried all sorts, but to no avail. Beatles, Jeff Buckley, La Roux, Beth Orton, Dylan, to name but a few, have all fallen on deaf ears.

My missus and I are desperate that she inherits some sort of musical nous, given that our walls are full of CDs - we're waiting for the epiphany!

their target age group!

Once upon a dream from Disney's Sleeping Beauty, normally horrible syrupy rubbish but my 3 1/2 year old daughter is able to sing it almost word for word, never in key and never on command (daddy, I already have is a typical response) but it's so cute - especially when she gets it wrong, as English is her second language (e.g. singing butterfly know you instead of "but if I know you")

its the weird way all the kids think that it's impossible that a band they've discovered have ever been heard (of) by anyone else. They genuinely find it hard to understand the fact that any adult might be familiar with the work of Led Zeppelin, for instance.

Well, I'm new here but had to chip in. I've been trying to steer my not-quite-three year old son away from the evils of Carrie and David's Pop Shop and toward more worthy things. However, I am finding it difficult to get his wee musical world beyond the Night Garden, Boogie Beebies and 'The wheels on the farkin bus go round and round'.

I guess that an introduction to the world of early seventies prog or contemporary serious singer-songwriters-with-stuff-to-say is going to have to wait awhile...

Sigh.

is not music.

Yes it is Dad.

No it isn't - and why don't they have noses?

Dad, just shut up.

How old are six year olds these days?

My daughter loves Abba and pretty much anything she can dance to (she is three). She also makes songs up on the spot from snippets of information overheard, this can be rather embarrassing in a supermarket queue. My son who is 8 likes a wide range of stuff but tends to give the same value to the good (say steely dan) as to the awful (crazy frog etc). I sneak stuff on to his ipod which i think he will like, this never works. "Dad, can you take of that song about having a 'plan stan', it's rubbish".

soon to be 30, maintains that The Groundhogs, with Planty on vocals, would have been much better than Led Zep... And when I listen to Split, I can see where the Little Lad is coming from..