The WFH Mama: Miss Rachel Must be Witchcraft

If you haven’t heard about Songs for Littles and don’t have a little one obsessed with Miss Rachel and her team of singers and puppets, then I’m going to assume you don’t have an internet connection. And also wonder how you are reading my blog…

If you are indeed wondering who Ms. Rachel is, allow me the pleasure to introduce you. Rachel Accurso is pre-school teacher in NYC married to a Broadway composer, Aron Accurso. When their son had speech delays, she found that there weren’t any television or video programs to help him overcome this delay. Her response? To team up with her composer husband and some of their musically inclined friends to make one. And man, is it insanely successful.

I first heard about Songs for Littles in one of the Facebook mommy groups I’m in (using my real name, not this pen name). Since I’d already tried Hey Bear and my baby had no effs to give about the dancing fruit or colorful animations, I didn’t have high hopes. She didn’t even respond to the music from her swings. But I decided to give it a shot. There were some moms who swore by it and others who said (no offense to her) Ms. Rachel got on their nerves. Even my own sister, who is a pre-school teacher, said she was so glad her kids were beyond those types of programs after watching an episode with Baby Girl. 

But then she went into preschool teacher mode and sounded exactly like Ms. Rachel, which was hilarious. 

My point with that is that Ms. Rachel is tailoring her speech and tone to babies and toddlers. Parents are not her target audience, so if she gets on your nerves, congratulations on not being a baby or a toddler.

  

But is your kid going to love her to the point that you worry her first word might be Rachel? Yes. You should see the way Baby Girl’s face lights up now when Ms. Rachel says “Hi!” from the TV. She also knows when to jump when Rachel is singing for the bunnies to hop or Jules is singing about marching dinosaurs. 

She’s 8 months old and responding to the songs. She’s watching so intently when Rachel shows how to say Mama or Dada or Baba. In fact, I blame Ms. Rachel for why Baby Girl’s first babble words were Baba instead of Mama or Dada since I have a special Mama and Dada song I made up for her. #salty On the other not so jealous hand, I have to admit that I was starting to get worried about Baby Kas’s lack of babbling until I switched it up and put the “Baby talk” videos into her rotation. Then it was “bababababa” all day long. 

As a first time mom, I really struggled with the screen time thing. But as a work from home mom, I knew it was something that I had to try. Thanks to Ms. Rachel, I can entertain Kas with videos but without the guilt. Kas is learning skills and a love of music by watching Songs for Littles. 

How does she do it? I have no idea. But now even all three of my stepkids (3, 5, and 11) catch themselves singing along with her or randomly busting out into one of her songs. Miss Rachel might not be a witch, but she’s definitely mesmerized little ones all over and is using her abilities for the greater good.