Child’s jump rope rhyme

(Girls name) is having a baby

(Boys name) is going crazy

They went to the doctor and the doctor said

Boy, girl, twins or an alien

Claire played this game when she was a bit older, around thirteen, and she remembers she began hearing this jump rope song right after they had just had their first sex-ed class. A group would gather together and someone would be jumping in the middle of two other people and they would chant this song. You would keep jumping until you no longer could jump anymore and whatever you landed on, boy, girl, twins, or an alien, was what everyone would predict you would have as a child. Now Claire knows its obviously a silly game, but at the time if someone landed on alien or they wanted a girl instead of a boy, she said that people would get really upset about it, especially if you landed on alien because you would be taunted all the rest of recess for it.

Claire believes that her and her friends were so embarrassed by this jump rope game because it was children joking about something that is kind of serious. The topic of having a child at that age is something that is slowly becoming a possibility, Claire described, and to sing a song about it made people nervous but adventurous at the same time. She described it as children dabbling with concepts they don’t understand but are trying to grasp the concept of.

I completely agree with Claire that this rhyme would be appealing because of the material being sung about in the song.  I believe that there are a lot of childhood rhymes that address subjects that may be more adult in subject but seem child like so it helps kid to talk about them without being uncomfortable. Through folklore such as children’s rhymes, topics can be addressed and taught to children but in a playful manner so that children can learn about topics such as babies, sex, and other adult topics without being uncomfortable. Thus this children’s rhyme demonstrates that and as Claire said, it helped them talk about a topic but jokingly.