EVERY KID HAD to play the recorder at my kindergarten. “Hot Cross Buns,” “Happy Birthday,” etc. At that age, the stakes were low enough that I considered “music” on par with recess four-square or being the line leader. Screeching out tunes on the recorder was no pressure, an activity nestled between picking my nose and eating Gushers.
But then the following year, Increase Miller Elementary School lived up to its name and required every first grader to play a real instrument. I was assigned the violin, and within minutes knew I no longer wanted anything to do with playing music. In fact, as we were taking the stage for our end-of-year concert, I threw my violin to the ground and broke it.
It’s not that I didn’t enjoy listening to music growing up. I still remember the swelling pride of bringing my first portable CD player on the bus, Hootie & the Blowfish’s Cracked Rear View cranking through by cheap headphones. When the iPod came out, I filled it with Limewire-ripped Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, and CCR. (Please don’t tell the RIAA.) But throughout my life music never felt like it was an important part of my identity.
Then my son was born. Outside of “Mama” and “Dada,” my kid’s first real word was—no lie—”record.” As in, “Dad, all I care about in the world is this disc that plays sound.” Despite me putting a baseball in his bassinet and pushing his stroller through every museum in NYC, my son is drawn not to sport or art, but music.
Specifically, the collection of 300-some vinyl records my parents gave to me when they downsized. Before my son was born, those records sat in a console in my living room—easy to forget about for an adult, but at the perfect eye-level for a toddler.
From the first day my son learned to crawl, he’s been enamored with vinyl. Because I’m not a music guy, I have no true attachment to the collection, so I’ve allowed him to make it his own. I am but his personal DJ assistant.
Taking one of the many scuffed, dog-hair covered, booger-encrusted (His! Not mine!) loose records laying around the room, he’ll have me lift him so he can place it on the player. He’s learned how to move the arm over and pull the lever down. Sound fills the room; his face explodes with delight. He loves The Beatles and Billy Joel and Bruce Springsteen and the original Saturday Night Fever soundtrack. He loves big, full, loud music with lots of instruments and epic swings in sound. He loves Chicago. I didn’t think I’d ever write this sentence as a father but: My 14-month-old son really loves Chicago.
Given how into vinyl my son is, I guess I should take better care of the records. Sometimes I think I should clean them. Sometimes I think I should by a nicer record player. But my entire idea of value has shifted since becoming a dad. All the value of those records rests in the fact that my kid likes the process of holding a physical thing and then it turns into noise and makes him happy. And who am to get in the way by telling him to “be gentle” or “not Daddy’s sentimental Passion Pit album” or “please don’t rub yogurt on Elton John?”
But then there’s also an unquantifiable value in stepping back and allowing him to build mental sinew and what very well might be a deep passion in music. That wasn’t me as a kid, but that’s something I’m learning as a dad: There’s only so much control you have over what your kid decides to gravitate towards.
When he gets to kindergarten, I wonder what he’ll think of the recorder.
LJ Rader is the creator of @artbutmakeitsports and now the book, Art But Make it Sports: Epic Matchups Where Art and Sports Collide (Chronicle Books, 2026).
