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Kermit the Frog with Jim Henson Credit...Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images

By Marc Tracy

Dear listeners,

They tell you about the lack of sleep, the tantrums and of course the diapers, but what they don’t tell you about parenting young children is that there’s some … challenging music. For whatever reason, epochs of evolution have evolved small humans into creatures who like listening to some pretty mid stuff: insipid earworms with off-kilter instrumentation, uncanny-valley vocals and even sexist lyrics (“The mommies on the bus go, ‘Shh shh shh’ / The daddies on the bus go, ‘I love you’”).

Still, if you look hard enough, you can find music your little children enjoy — music in fact composed and recorded primarily to be enjoyed by little children — that is also agreeable to you. It may rarely be sophisticated, but it will often be smart, fun, good. Put such songs in your rotation and you may stave off the next time you have to hear about a certain blue cat’s certain white shoes, and you can get back to enjoying the company of your favorite people on the planet without the distraction of their baleful musical taste.

We’ll offer some standbys — no list is complete without Kermit the Frog or that rascal Puff, courtesy of Peter, Paul and Mary — but you may also be surprised to hear the lead singer of one of your favorite 1990s bands, a full orchestra and … Jerry Garcia?