Repetition and The Gummy Bear Song

Do you know the Gummy Bear Song?  Here’s an experiment – try playing this song just once for your child. It’s impossible!

Children love repetition. Parents? It depends. I like the idea of $100 bills repetitively replenishing my wallet and personal sushi chefs slicing raw fish in the kitchen all day to feed me on demand. That kind of repetition I could go for any day of the week.  When it comes to the repetitions and routines of daily life, however, many parents would like to stick a needle directly into their retina. Children, on the other hand, seem to embrace repetition and seek it out.  They just can’t seem to get enough of that very thing that we find to be unbearable.

Such is the case for those yummy-in-your-tummy-funny gummy bears. If you get tired of walking over to your playback device and hitting the replay button over and over again, you are in luck. Some genius parent created a 10 hour loop!  That gives you enough time to watch a full season of Curb Your Enthusiasm and start a batch of home-brew (if you’re a fan of bad-parenting-type activities).

I can’t say I’ve shown my son the above version of the Gummy Bear Song yet.  I think it would be a complete disaster.  I prefer having him work for his Gummy-Bear-Song reward by requiring him to press the repeat button on his own each time the song ends.  It’s better exercise. He’s going to have strong index finger muscles just like his old man.

Things I Can’t Deny About the Gummy Bear Song:

• This song is very catchy
• I’ve jumped off the couch and bounced to its intense beats
• I’ve dances around the ottoman until I was dizzy
• I’ve hit the repeat button myself to hear this song again

 But…

After listening to this song 26 times in a row and hearing my son shout “AGAIN, DADDY!” I was ready to toss the iPad out the window (or to at least hit the off-button emphatically and with gusto).

That’s the very moment my son discovered that the Gummy Bear Song is also available in:

1) French:

2) Spanish:

3) German:

4) Swedish:

5) Hungarian:

When he’s not bopping to the Gummy Bear Song, my son also has an affinity for a song called Who Let the Frog Out (Who-Let-the-Dogs-Out’s lesser known fraternal twin). I searched for this song on YouTube and was only able to find this crappy abbreviated version:

Isn’t that completely psychedelic and fuzzy?  It doesn’t matter. My son digs the cracking, background noise, and the terrible graphics.  He also loves that it’s only 30 seconds long.  This gives him enough time to dance around the ottoman twice, hit replay, and start all over again.

Repetition is a double-edged sword. On one hand, repetition is comforting to children and it helps them learn. I’m not sure WHAT exactly my son is learning from the Gummy Bear Song and Who Let the Frog Out, but I’m sure it’s something important. On the other hand, repetition sometimes helps an adult’s brain rot (something is decaying in my head as I write this). Either way, as a parent, you need to be prepared to dance.