Getting ready for Taylor: Shake it off to bond with your children
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Gillian Harvey’s 10-year-old daughter, Sophie, knows every word of every Taylor Swift song.
“You only have to play a little tune and she knows everything about that song,” says the Naas-based mum-of-two, adding that the whole family are now Swifties — the name given to enthusiastic fans of the singer.
With Swift’s Eras tour set to hit Dublin for three concerts in the Aviva Stadium this weekend, Harvey lost many nights’ sleep, worrying she wouldn’t get a ticket for her super-fan daughter. “Sophie has wanted to see Taylor Swift for so long. I’d travel to the ends of the earth to make her happy. It was coming up to her 10th birthday, which is a special birthday, it being double digits.”
Despite her best efforts, Harvey didn’t get a ticket for any of the Dublin dates. Along with her husband, she runs Instagram account @WhereAreWeGoingTomorrowTravel, which shares information on travelling with kids.
Harvey used her platform, calling on anyone selling tickets to anywhere in Europe. “Someone messaged to say they had four tickets. We’ve tied it into our family holiday, going to Venice, the Dolomites — and then travelling down by train to the concert in Milan on July 14.”
Telling Sophie was “quite emotional”, says her mum. “She has always listened to Taylor Swift. She started with the song ‘Shake It Off’ from the movie, . In the last two years she has been really into her, so Chloe, who’s seven, has been fed Taylor Swift. Chloe’s favourite song is ‘Love Story’ — she loves the Romeo and Juliet part.
“We listen to Taylor Swift all the time, especially in the car — they’re great songs to sing along with,” says Gillian, adding that Sophie dressed up as the star for World Book Day. “With the guitar, she was the double of her.”
Harvey loves that the songs are about friendship, and the lyrics are quite positive. “The songs have nice messages and meaning behind them. She’s a great role model. She contributes to hope and inspiration for young people and, with her friendship bracelets, she encourages creativity. My girls have got into making the bracelets and at the concert they’re planning to exchange them with other Swifties.
“I like that she uses her platform to make a difference. She’s very outspoken about bullying, and is always trying to portray that message. It’s good for young kids who go through so many changes.”
Harvey, a Montessori teacher, says the family are super-excited about the concert. “It’ll be the girls’ first proper grown-up concert so I know it’s going to be a core memory for us. Chloe will take it all in her stride. Sophie won’t be able to sleep the night before – she’ll be all caught up. At the concert itself, she’ll be taking it all in, and probably quite emotional as well — she was so emotional when we told her about it.”
At the Lough in Cork city, mum-of-two Marian Healy says the family’s love for Taylor Swift goes back to when her niece, now 19, used to sing 'Love Story' during Karaoke sessions. The secondary schoolteacher, mum to Theo, eight, and Eliza Jean, six, has memories of dancing around the kitchen to ‘Shake It Off’ when Eliza was two. “We’ve loads of videos of that — they bring me right back. That’s when we got the dog — Eliza was just turning three — a greyhound rescue and we named her Taylor Swift!”
‘Love Story’ is currently Eliza’s favourite song. “That makes it my least favourite,” interjects her brother, Theo, who’s listening as his mum chats to me. Healy, who loves pop music, says it’s all about the lyrics for her — the ones from Taylor Swift that come straight to her mind are ‘It's me, Hi, I'm the problem’ and ‘You Need to Calm Down’. “I quote them a lot!” she laughs.
Adding that her husband, Diarmaid Shortall, is almost a bigger Swifty than she is, Healy says: “We’re always listening to albums when they’re just released, or to new music.”
They also love the type of person Taylor Swift is. “She’s a high-profile star but still down-to-earth. She knows all her dancers by name and she realises they need to be looked after well. It’s lovely to know that on her tour she looks after everyone and not just the high fliers.”
She and Diarmaid were on their way to pick Theo and Eliza up from a STEM camp last summer when he successfully got tickets online for this Saturday’s concert in Dublin. “I couldn’t believe it. Diarmaid said straightaway, ‘We’ll bring the kids’,” says Healy, who recalls her older siblings going to see Michael Jackson when he came to Cork in the late ‘80s, while she — aged five or six — was deemed too young to go. “I remember going back home with Dad in the car.”
She is looking forward to seeing her children’s reaction to a star in the flesh. “They’ve never been to a concert before. Do they even know she’s real and not a person on the telly? At the moment she’s just out there. To see someone in real life will be an amazing experience for them. And it’ll be fabulous for us to see things through their eyes, to see them experience something for the first time.
“There’s also the novelty of going away for the night, staying in a hotel, it’ll be fabulous. They’re at an age when they’ll remember it — their first time at a big concert, the stadium. Hopefully the memories will stick for a long time, of how lovely it was to have this time together as a family.”
Psychotherapist Bethan O’Riordan is a Swifty, something she shares with her 11-year-old daughter, Ruby. “We just love to listen to the music together. The Taylor songs are so emotive but they’re not too dark. They cover good life topics and we can belt them out together,” says O’Riordan, adding that Ruby got interested when she was eight.
“My best friend in Scotland is a massive Taylor Swift fan, and Ruby was listening to a conversation we were having, and said ‘who’s Taylor Swift?’ We watched the Red Tour on TV and Ruby said, ‘Wow!’ It was like a feast for her senses – the costumes, the music.”
O’Riordan loves that a passion for music shared between parents and children can bring a lightness to what she calls the “seriousness” of parenthood. “So much of parenthood is really serious. We worry, we think, we wonder, and every day our children can come home to us with a problem — something small or big.”
Adding that children “need us not to micromanage” or come up with immediate solutions, she says: “Day to day, if you’re in a pickle and you can hum a song, or have a sing or a dance, put music on in the car, it changes the tone of how your body responds to stress.”
Music is so emotional, says O’Riordan, and so intimate, even in a stadium of 8,000 people. While she didn’t succeed in getting Taylor Swift concert tickets, the family went together to a Westlife concert. “We took our youngest to Ed Sheeran at three-and-a-half. To see children belting out songs — there’s a freedom. I don’t know if they’d do it anywhere else. We want children to be safe, happy and comfortable in who they are. At a concert, you can let yourself go, you can be elated, you can cry. It’s amazing if your parents can be there to witness that and to witness all parts of you.”
O’Riordan says attachment occurs out of that feeling of sharing intimate joy and delight with your child. She urges concert-goers not to disrupt this by filming it. “Take a few pictures to print off and put up on a wall, so you will say, ‘Oh wow! We did this thing together and we have memories of a great time’. When we look at a picture like this, we smile, it helps to re-set us.”
Otherwise, she says, avoid the distraction of the camera. “Just be in this moment. Have joy with your child. Drink in that feeling.”
- Kidspace, Rathcoole (www.kidspace.ie), is hosting Taylor Swift-themed events from June 28-30, 10am-noon. A supervised two-hour drop-off session, suitable for 4-10-year-olds, costs €25 per child.