Today at the park I was voted to be the alligator or crocodile depending on who was running, anywhere between 2 and 10 children. There was common phrase that all the children yelled as they ran from me. “Nah nah nah nah boo boo you can’t catch me.”  Now I tried searching online to determine the origin of this phrase and I couldn’t find it.

So I thought about where our kids might have learned this universal phrase that they all seemed to chant as they ran in multiple directions in order to distract the alligator. I could only think of one book that we read to our kids that had this phrase, The Gingerbread Man. WARNING to all parents if a phrase is repeated more than 10 times in the same book there is a high probability that the children will remember and chant the phrase. I would like to recommend the following rating on all children’s books.

• NR – No repeats (Safe for all children)
• R – Repeats a few times
• PG-13 – Parents Guide for reading out loud 13 Repeats or less
• PG – Parents Guess how many there are
• G – Gobs of Repeats so read out loud at your own risk