Don’t you just love the classics? From nursery rhymes like “Hey Diddle Diddle” to finger plays like “Where is Thumpkin?” they brink us back to our own childhoods, providing a sense of warm memories and familiarity. That said, there are several things that I’ve found objectionable when it comes to the classics, and I think there is always a way around these objections.

I don’t mean to be fussy about it; I get that “Ring Around the Rosy” has a dark history, that most fairy tales had much more grisly endings than the ones we know of; in fact, I have a copy of Grimm’s Grimmest, and I really enjoyed reading it as an adult. That said, I’d prefer that my daughter not be exposed to, oh, cannibalism and abuse, until she’s an older reader who can handle such themes. While some parents might argue that kids shouldn’t be sheltered—and I would agree, for the most part—I still maintain that childhood should last throughout childhood, not be ended abruptly with adult encroachment.

At any rate, I think it’s fine to alter some of our classics when we feel like they’re just a bit too much. Here are a few that we use in our home:

This Little Piggy: I’ve always had a problem with the piggy eating meat—though they certainly do eat meat—when I’m trying to raise my daughter with vegetarian options. To make it just a little bit friendlier, “This little piggy had apples” instead of roast beef. It sounds cuter to me, anyway!

Ten Little Indians: This song was one of my favorites as a child, sung to me by my beloved grandmother. However, today I feel like it’s highly objectionable—I don’t like sports teams named after ethnic groups, either—so we sing it a different way. Though we might swap any number of animals or creatures, our favorite is “Ten Little Fairies.”

There Was an Old Woman: Spanking kids soundly and putting them to bed will not happen in this house. We like “kissed” in place of “spanked.” It’s a very easy, simple substitution that turns a rhyme completely around, from one of violence and frustration to one of love.

Old MacDonald: Though I’m not teaching my daughter about factory farms yet—after all, she’s only four—I am very conscious of the way farms are used in the media and children’s books and toys in manipulating her to believe they are a happy place when, in fact, most of the stuff in our grocery stores comes from very violent, woeful factory farms full of pain and despair. So instead, we sing about Ranger Ricky and her park, where she comes across just about any animal you could ever think of—since rangers and parks can pretty much exist wherever there is land and animals!

Where is Thumkin? This one is simple: we just change every other finger from a “sir” to a “ma’am” to include both male and female genders.

I’m not the word police; we do still keep many rhymes that could be objectionable—Jack and Jill, Humpty Dumpty, etc.—as they are, explaining more about them if asked. But a little updating, I think, isn’t that bad of a thing; after all, how else would we have Pride and Prejudice and Zombies?