My Beef With Children's Songs

A couple of nights ago I was singing to my kids trying to get them to go to sleep, it's a fun thing for them. We sing "fast" songs and then a couple of "slow" songs. Well I let the kids choose the fast songs and they always choose one that we have started to call the monkey song. The song basically goes like this:

5 little monkeys swinging in a tree
teasing mr. alligator, can't catch me
can't catch me
(sung quietly)along comes mr. alligator quite as can be and
(loud while clapping hands)snaps that monkey right out of the tree.

And that's repeated until the alligator has had his fill and the monkeys are all gone. I just had to laugh the other night as we were singing it because it is just so funny, a song about alligators eating monkeys. I suprised that some animal rights group hasn't tryed to get the words changed or ban the song completely.

Nursery rhymes are about the same thing. They are horrible. Take Old Mother Hubbard for instance. It's about a old lady living with her dog and they have run out of bones so the dog has to starve because he had none. Poor dog. An what about the Old Woman in the Shoe where is the father or the government help.

Thanks for letting me get that off my chest.