What Kids Teach Us About Empathy When They Share Your Partner’s Favorite Songs
I was perched on the edge of the living room couch last Tuesday, half-folded laundry piled in my lap, a faint throbbing still lingering from the migraine I’d fought all day. I’d just hung up on a last-minute work call, and my partner and I had bickered that morning over forgotten dry cleaning and overflowing trash cans; he’d left for his construction job without a goodbye, and we’d only exchanged one terse text between then and dinner. My 6-year-old Lila and 4-year-old Jax had been quiet for 10 whole minutes, which is always a red flag, so I looked up just in time to see them huddled in the doorway, holding hands.
They padded over, climbed up on either side of me without asking, and Lila announced “We have something for you.” Then they started singing.
It was the wrong version of You Are My Sunshine, the one my husband sings every time he puts them to bed on the nights I work late. He can never remember the words to the second verse, so he makes up replacements about sticky syrup and their favorite dinosaur toys, and he adds a whole extra verse at the end that says “please don’t cry, mommy’s fine, give her a hug and a glass of wine.” It’s off-key, it’s silly, and I’d only ever heard him sing it through the baby monitor when I was working in the next room. They nailed every wrong word, even the little pause he takes to cough mid-verse that he thinks no one notices.
By the third line, I had tears running down my face. I didn’t sob or anything, just wiped them on the leg of my old gray sweatpants because my hands were busy holding a pair of Jax’s dinosaur socks. Lila stopped singing for half a second to squint at me and ask if I was hurt, and I said I was fine, just happy. She nodded, like that made perfect sense, and they picked back up where they left off.
After they finished, Jax climbed into my lap and smelled like grape juice and playground dirt, and Lila explained that they practiced because they knew my head hurt, and dad sings when their heads hurt. That’s when it hit me: I’d spent the last couple of years buying into the idea that every parent needs their own unique set of traditions with their kids. I’d felt guilty for years that my husband did bedtime three nights a week, that he had the songs, that the pancakes on Saturdays were his thing, while I just had the weekend hikes and the doctor’s visits. I worried that meant our bond was less special, that I was missing out on the small, intimate moments that stick with kids.
What I didn’t realize is that kids don’t see love and connection as something you have to claim as your own. They pick up the safe, warm routines they see one person use, and they reuse them for someone else who needs it. That’s not just a sweet moment—it’s how they practice empathy. Kids learn to care for other people by imitating the caring behaviors they’ve already seen, not by inventing something new. This isn’t some big, fancy skill they only learn in preschool; it’s something they do naturally when they feel safe enough to pass along what they know.
The practical takeaway for other parents or caregivers is that you don’t have to reinvent the wheel to build connection. A lot of us feel like we’re failing if we don’t have our own special song or our own weekend tradition that’s just ours and the kids. But the reality is, you can lean into what’s already there. If your co-parent has a go-to bedtime song, ask your kids to teach it to you. If your step-kids have a favorite game they play with their other parent, ask them to show you how to play it, and let them correct your mistakes when you do it wrong. If you’re a preschool teacher, ask your kids to share the songs their parents sing at home, and keep a list of them to pull out when a kid is upset or homesick. It takes almost no extra work, and it means way more than coming up with something brand new.
I used to think I needed to create my own set of songs and routines to be a good mom. Now I just let the kids lead. Last week, when Jax fell and scraped his knee at the park, I started singing that wrong version of You Are My Sunshine, and he stopped crying mid-sob to correct my extra verse. That’s the thing: when kids get to share the things they already love, they get to feel capable, like they’re the ones taking care of you sometimes. That’s something you can’t manufacture with a brand new tradition you planned out on Pinterest.
Later that Tuesday night, after the kids were in bed, I told my husband about the song. He leaned against the kitchen counter while we washed dishes and laughed, and said he’d added that extra verse about me after I had that bad migraine back in March. We didn’t do a big sappy reconciliation from the morning’s fight; he just took the trash out when he went out for his post-dinner cigarette, and I packed the dry cleaning bag to drop off the next day.
Some days I still feel guilty that I’m not the one doing bedtime most nights, that I don’t have my own signature song. But when I’m having a bad day now, two small off-key voices start singing that wrong version of the song, and I remember that connection isn’t about owning a tradition. It’s about passing the good stuff along, one wrong verse at a time. Some of the best moments don’t get planned. They just get shared.
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