Mr. Mike's Family Notes: Meet The Glidden Family

"Bonus Points If I Could Make a Friend"

Meet Jacquelyn Glidden and her daughters Juliette and Dorothy. Jacquelyn signed up for our babies class in the summer of 2022 for one of the most honest reasons I hear from new parents: it was hot, she had a three-month-old, and she needed to get out of the house.

She didn't know any other new moms yet. She wanted something inside and air-conditioned, somewhere she might talk with another adult, maybe even make a friend. She saw a post for our class and signed up immediately. That was almost four years ago. Jacquelyn and her daughters have been in class every semester since.

What hooked her wasn't what she expected. Jacquelyn has a PhD in Child Development, and she recognized something different right away. She saw how the class held space for parents to connect with each other, gave babies room to absorb music and movement at their own pace, and created moments of quiet closeness between families. It wasn't a performance. It was families in a room making something together.

This is what connected me to Music Together as well. I grew up in Kentucky where music in my family meant cousins and aunts and uncles singing together while the kids ran around playing. No one stopped us to make us join in, but we were connected to it. We knew we would grow into it, and we knew it came out of pure joy.

Jacquelyn's description of what she found in our class, adults getting together and connecting while the children absorb the music in their own way, fills me with pride. That's the feeling I want every family to have in our classes.

Jacquelyn's second child Dorothy came along. She came to class as a baby too. And something Jacquelyn didn't anticipate started happening. Songs from earlier collections came back around, and they carried memories with them. She told me that hearing a song from Juliette's very first babies class played three years later brought everything flooding back: over-packing the diaper bag, walking through the July heat to get to class, the first time a song from class soothed Juliette during a diaper change. All of it, in the best possible way.

And then there's the friendships. She's met some of her closest parent friends through class. They run into each other at parades, on school tours, at Trader Joe's. She said she's met dozens of families she would now call friends. That kind of connection can be hard to find as a new parent. She called it "truly a treasure."

Q. Which songs are family favorites, and what makes you say so?

A. Last summer our newborn started attending classes. The 'snuggle song,' as we call it, was 'There's a Little Wheel.' This song became Dorothy's song: I would sing it to her in the rocking chair, modify the words as we were doing our routine (there's a little baby rocking in my lap, there's a little baby getting a new diaper, there's a little baby waiting on her milk.) It became such a core part of Dorothy's newborn era. When Mrs. Deb recently played the song in class, I had to try not to cry as I remembered just how small Dorothy was last year, and just how special that song was to our newborn days.

Another recent favorite is from the current collection. I don't know the name but it goes “see the pony galloping, galloping, down the country lane.” My girls are obsessed with getting a lap ride and singing that song. The other morning while I was getting ready, my girls were in their room and I heard my oldest start singing it. I ran over to see her giving her baby sister a lap ride and hearing them both erupt in laughter as the pony came home all tired out and they both collapsed onto the floor. What a gift to have given them this moment of bonding and pure joy!

What Jacquelyn did with that song is worth its own post. Next week I'll write about what our teachers call a "diaper bag song" and how certain melodies can get you through the grocery store, the diaper change, and other challenging moments.

This is how a family's music gets built. It doesn't happen on a stage. It happens at the changing table, in the rocking chair, and in the car. Juliette started in the babies class at three months old. Dorothy followed her into that same room. The songs they'll carry are the ones their mother chose for them, the ones she sang during the ordinary moments of their day. Those songs belong to the Glidden family now.

There's room for your family too. Come see what a class sounds like.