National Public Radio recently did a report on why toddlers like the Beatles so much. (Funniest line: “Beatlemania returns to America this week.” What? It left?)

According to Dr. Deforia Lane,

The Beatles have repetition, predictability and rhythm. And in certain cases, it literally paints a picture for children. And quite frankly, the beat makes you want to move.

Heeeeey…sounds like Super Simple Songs characteristics to me! (And we thought of all that first, right?)

The Super Simple Songs have loads of repetition (Uh-huh), predictability (Rain Rain Go Away – Play With It), and rhythm (Knock Knock, Trick or Treat). The Bath Song paints a picture for the children, and you can’t sit still during The Pinocchio. (Links for the rest of the songs.)

Yes, much of me suspects that these kids are singing the Beatles mainly because their parents and teachers like the Beatles, but it’s true: many Beatles songs are easy for kids to sing and relate to. I like Bob Dylan, but I don’t have my kids sing his songs. (Another terrifically helpful Beatles/Super Simple Songs characteristic: articulation.)

I didn’t realize the Beatles’ higher voice range is also an appealing characteristic for toddlers. I would have thought lower registers were preferred, but I haven’t heard many toddlers squealing for Barry White or the Righteous Brothers.

The short report is well worth a listen. If you prefer reading, there’s a hastily-written not-yet-corrected transcript on the same page (ooh, I love those misheard lyrics at the end: I get high! I get high! I get high! not exactly what you want your toddlers singing at top of their lungs, eh?).

To answer my first question above, I don’t remember singing the Beatles as a kid. Not a single one. I don’t know why!

Oh, who is Dr. Lane? She’s a music therapist and the coordinator of the Toddler Rock program at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, Ohio. Toddler Rock? I didn’t know this program existed. How cool is that? We should organize a field trip, yes?

Why?

Check out this great short piece from Paul McGhee on “what makes children laugh (pdf file), adapted from his book Understanding and Promoting the Development of Children’s Humor.

Also check out  this article from Washington Post Magazine, The Peekaboo Paradox.   It’s an interesting read about a performer for kids’ parties in D.C.  I’m sure it will be optioned and we’ll be seeing the Peekaboo Paradox at a megaplex near you sometime soon, starring Brad Pitt as the lovable children’s performer with a gambling addiction.  Anyway, it contains some interesting perspectives on children’s humor:

–Even before they respond to a tickle, most babies will laugh at peekaboo. It’s their first “joke.” They are reacting to a sequence of events that begins with the presence of a familiar, comforting face. Then, suddenly, the face disappears, and you can read in the baby’s expression momentary puzzlement and alarm. When the face suddenly reappears, everything is orderly in the baby’s world again. Anxiety is banished, and the baby reacts with her very first laugh.

At its heart, laughter is a tool to triumph over fear. As we grow older, our senses of humor become more demanding and refined, but that basic, hard-wired reflex remains. We need it, because life is scary. Nature is heartless, people can be cruel, and death and suffering are inevitable and arbitrary. We learn to tame our terror by laughing at the absurdity of it all.

This point has been made by experts ranging from Richard Pryor to doctoral candidates writing tedious theses on the ontol-ogical basis of humor. Any joke, any amusing observation, can be deconstructed to fit. The seemingly benign Henny Youngman one-liner, “Take my wife . . . please!” relies in its heart on an understanding that love can become a straitjacket. By laughing at that recognition, you are rising above it, and blunting its power to disturb.

After the peekaboo age, but before the age of such sophisticated understanding, dwells the preschooler. His sense of humor is more than infantile but less than truly perceptive. He comprehends irony but not sarcasm. He lacks knowledge but not feeling. The central fact of his world — and the central terror to be overcome — is his own powerlessness. –