An age-five defense of Taylor Swift

Shake it off, Jordan!

I would never have predicted all the dancing with children, but oh, we have a lot of dance parties. We dance at home, we dance in public. We boogie down the sidewalk. We dance in our seats in the car.

Lately Taylor Swift is our music of choice at home.

She's also who we listen to on the rare occasion that we're in the car. So we hear the same three or four songs over and over and over. Fortunately, when I like something, I have a high tolerance for repetition.

We start with Blank Space. Always. Sometimes we get as far as Shake It Off. Once, when we drove to Maryland, we got to the end of the CD! Well, actually, we had to sit in the car outside our house to wait for that last song to end.

Jordan can sing along. India knows little bits here and there.

(Sadly for them, as you know, their mother is one to sing "lonely Starbucks lovers" until she finds out it's "a long list of ex-lovers" so I am not to correct them in their interpretations.)

My Jordan, he really listens. Seriously. You should hear him sing, "'Cause darling I'm a nightmare dressed like a daydream..."

And they ask questions! They listen and they ask!

"Why the worst is yet to come? Why screaming crying perfect storm?" "She said 'hate'! We don't say hate. Hate is a wrinkle word. Why she said 'hate hate hate', Mama?"

So then I try to explain. Like, with the haters gonna hate, "Mean people are always going to say mean things. You shouldn't listen to them, because they're just trying to make you feel bad." (Teachable moment!)

And in Blank Space, "She's just pretending to be a crazy person and do bad things. It's not real. It's just a story for the song."

So the other day, when Jordan heard the line, "Midnight, You come and pick me up, no headlights. Long drive..."

He said, "Midnight! No headlights! Why she's driving with no headlights?"

And I said, "Well, if it's midnight and there are no headlights, they're being sneaky. They don't want anyone to know."

And then I remembered that these are lessons he's learning, right?

So I said, "But! It's a very bad thing to do! We would NEVER drive in the dark with no headlights. You wouldn't be able to see where you were going. You could get in an accident. It is SO DANGEROUS to drive at night with no headlights!"

And Jordan said, "Mama, I think she's just saying it for the song. Taylor Swift doesn't really drive with no headlights. She wouldn't do that."