child-free environment?

yes and no. My 7 year old son has no interest in listening to my system and he has been good about not touching it since he knows he's not allowed.

Yes and Yes. My kid is 18 month old and has been listening since the day he got back from the hospital.

Today he is obsesed with vinyl. We recently moved into a new home and I now have a dedicated listening room in the basement. When we are upstairs he often signal by waving his hand that I should bring him down stairs. Once in the room he runs to the TT but does not touch it (it is an SL-1200). As I lift the dust cover he presses the start stop button to get it going. I can ask him start/stop it and he gladly does. When I clean the dust from the regard he will pass me the brush.

We listen, we dance and many times he falls a sleep in his dads arm, sitting peacefully in the sweet-spot.

My biggest problem is not the gear but the vinyl. He loves to take records off the rack and pull them out of thier sleeves. He has his own records (old scratched ones) for that purpose but he still tries take others. The goods stuff is on the top shelf.

My obsession with music listening come from my father. We always had music playing in the house as I was growing up. Today I have my dad's vinyl collection (after my Mom bought a Bose Wave system Arrgh!)The vinyl is mostly in very bad shape but a few great records survived.

When I was in elementary school my Dad and I had a running gag. I would come home for lunch everyday, with my Dad and he would always be playing classical piano records; Bach, Chopin etc... We would joke that we had a private pianist that would play just for us.

The other day the pianist gag came-up, I told my Dad the pianist is still playing for us. My son and I that is and he is welcome to come by at anytime. Today pianist sounds better than he ever did. I hope he will continue to play for many generations to come.

I am encouraged to hear so many say they want the kids to have an appreciation of good music and good sounding music!

I think if they have good sounding tunes then they will strive to find more music they like. Broadening their horizons.

Best

Dave

Children are different than adults. They are in the process of learning. They will make mistakes. They will test boundaries. Many children will not be diagnosed with developmental delays until after the age of two. Many children have died from pulling TV's onto themselves. Early teaching is a supervised activity. Please use caution and proper risk management protocols with those that have neither the maturity, knowledge or responsibility to consistently make proper decisions.

well said Unsound. at the end of the day, a crunched dust cap isn't that important. Some equipment (and all that electricity) on the other hand can be hi risk to little ones.