What kid wants to listen to music their parents love ?

The majority of us try to influence our children’s music tastes, according to a new survey — and between the ages of eight to 10, they are most likely to take heed. But should we even be trying? There’s little more narcissistic than some cool parent boasting on Facebook that discerning toddler Ella loves Brian Eno more than Taylor Swift, as though this means their contribution to raising a child is all but done.

These parents see their children not as their own people at the beginning of a musical adventure, but merely as an agent of an already self-consciously curated record collection. Forcing your music tastes on your offspring is a posturing vanity no smaller than dressing them top to toe in Gucci and carrying them like a new handbag.

Admittedly, my children’s father and I tried to influence the tastes of our boys (now 11 and 14) from the beginning, but it was entirely selfish. We couldn’t bear the usual nursery rhyme and lullaby CDs, and so for the sake of our sanity, played Gomez musician Tom Gray’s brilliant Shoe Baby musical, written for kids, almost on a loop for five sleep-deprived years.

Meanwhile, some songs were meant for us and not for their (we thought) sleeping brains. My blood pressure has only just returned to normal following my then eight-year-old’s request for 50 Cent at a friend’s birthday party, and I shudder to recall the time my tiny boys cheerfully sang “God’s Cop” by Happy Mondays, ecstasy references and all. I had no one to disapprove of but myself.

In reality, forcing your music tastes on kids has limited success, because what young person in their right mind wants parentapproved pop? Had my father not dismissed The Smiths as “miserable sods,” or my grandmother not categorized Madonna as the kind of woman she’d never want eating off her best china, then would I have run headlong, and with such desperate devotion, into both? Doubtful. My mother’s total lack of interest in any music beyond rugby songs and big band jazz forced my brothers and me to seek our musical education in record shops, at gigs (I went with them to my first, to see The Smiths, at just 11), at school and in films. We listened to records obsessively, discovering new and old music, developing our own tastes. I would hate to deprive my own children of the sheer joy of finding what floats their musical boat.

Besides, it’s selfish to try to gatecrash what is such an exciting and pivotal time in a child’s life. The joy of discovering music is in working out what turns you on, not in being handed some musical prescription from a control freak.

Instead of trying to influence our kids’ taste in music, perhaps we should allow them to shape ours. My two sons have taught me to be open-minded again, just as I was at their age, before I became distracted by genre, what I was meant to like, what my record collection said about me.

They’re just in it for the tunes. My youngest has a playlist that would send a Radio 1 programmer into meltdown. Toto’s Africa stands unapologetically alongside “God Save the Queen” by the Sex Pistols, Ben E. King’s “Stand By Me” and Gorillaz’s “Clint Eastwood” segue improbably into “No Diggity” and “Lollipop Lollipop.” Once, its 12-year-old curator lectured my husband on how “Mr. Sandman,” released in 1954, is “a banger” — this from a child who believes Drake to be the second coming.

Consequently, I find it nearly impossible to predict what they’ll like and won’t. I felt confident in Pixies and Nirvana, but no dice. “It’s just noise”, my son said like a true ‘50s grandad. The fact that all music emerges from the same anonymous Sonos speaker — without artwork, date of release to prejudice them, or an album track listing for context — means children carry none of the baggage and hear only the tunes. It’s energizing and inspiring.

There’s nothing wrong with wanting to share delight in the same music, of course. But all we can do is expose our children to good records and hope it inspires in them a love of music, their music.

Leave them to find their way, then sometimes, just sometimes, you will experience the conspiratorial magic in deciding to go for a long drive to nowhere, chucking on your shoes with your pyjamas, handing over the car stereo controls to your child and hearing your entire family bellow “Twist ‘n’ Shout” as you whizz along the seafront.

You’ll be too happy to care if Kanye comes on next.