Nursery rhymes, sung or read, with or without actions, are a rich way to extend your baby’s life and
preschool cognitive development.
Nursery rhymes have a long history: they are sung, recited or read, some have actions and are often passed on to you by your parents. Are they not dated? Don’t you want to give your baby the latest and greatest?
The fact is, the baby won’t mind. If it comes naturally to you, and it will, if you were also sung to as a child, in whatever language your mother tongue is, then it’s also perfect to pass on to your little one. They don’t know that some, in English anyway, are about 500 years old. They will come to recognize the words, the melodies, the actions.
They are always at hand. Amuse a child on a long car trip – how many nursery rhymes can you remember? Or while the baby is waiting for his food, he can always respond to ‘Baa baa black sheep’ when you sing it, or ‘Twinkle twinkle little star’.
Then there is language development. Strong rhymes can make baby predict the next word and join in, long before that word is part of their spoken vocabulary: ‘Once I saw a little bird / Come hop, hop -‘ ‘Hop!’ your little one screams with joy. The word for a nursery rhyme can be a request for everyone. “Oh dear” (sung) was how a little boy requested a nursery rhyme session at the piano at sixteen months. And the word ‘spider’ or actually seeing one – real or photographed – would lead to an attempt to perform the actions of ‘Ipsey wipsey spider climbed the waterspout’, even at thirteen months. Another, at twelve months, responded to the song ‘Twinkle twinkle’, or to the shape of a star seen, with the shape of a diamond in the fingers.
Some of the actions are very dramatic. ‘This is how the ladies ride / Tri, tre, tre, arbol, tri tre tre arbol’ with the ending where the butcher boy does ‘bumpety bumpety bumpety – off’, all so exciting on (and off) the knee of an officiating adult.
Some of the words are outdated, even archaic, but any language at this age is a good language, and if used correctly it can be understood perfectly. At three years old, a girl was still using baby language, so she begged to be picked up: “Ugh, uff, or my heart will break,” a phrase her brother, six months younger, used when he was trapped. on a fence: ‘Help me or my heart will break!’ (the nursery rhyme is ‘There was a lady who loved a pig’)
But aren’t they full of violence and death? Everyone seems to know the (apocryphal) story about ‘Ring a ring a rosies / a pocket full of poies’ about the plague. But it does not matter to a child, who enjoys playing and falling very much. In fact, another child used the word ‘awfawdow’ (‘everyone falls down’) when looking at any nursery rhyme book, or even when he saw one of his parents sitting on the floor. But there is also death and violence, in terms the child can understand: ‘Goosy goosy gander’ has ‘an old man’ thrown down the stairs, ‘Solomon Grundy’ died on Saturday, buried on Sunday ‘, and’ Who killed Cock? Robin? ‘(‘ a sparrow with an arrow ‘answered a child when hearing the phrase as the title of a picture book). Once upon a time, these casual looks at death might have prepared children (just a little bit) for the deaths of siblings and even parents, which were far more common than they are now. Today rhymes are just part of the cycle of life and death, which most of today’s lucky children learn through the life and death of their pets and grandparents.
Well I can hear you say, ain’t some of them coming nonsense? Yes, of course it is true. There are the most open ones like ‘Two children sliding on the ice, / All on a summer day’ and the more subtle ones that tell stories that are simply impossible ‘There was an old woman who lived in a shoe’. But nonsense, puns, fantasy, and imagination are all ways the toddler learns about reality, too. They can laugh at these rhymes backwards, understanding the humor and its unreality.
In short, offer lullabies to your baby from birth. They will give the little one infinite pleasure, and will also remind you of your own childhood.