What to Do When Your Toddler Learns 'She Gon Call Me Baby Booter'

When my two-year-old twin girls started doing a weird, jerky zombie shuffle around the kitchen island chanting a garbled phrase, I asked three different people for advice on what to do. My mother, over a lukewarm cup of tea, told me to ignore it because "you used to pretend to be a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle for six months straight and you turned out moderately fine." The terrifyingly intense mum at our Greenwich playgroup leaned in, eyes wild over her matcha latte, and whispered that I needed to throw our iPad into the Thames immediately. Finally, my mate Dave at the pub suggested I just put them in extremely heavy winter boots so they couldn't physically do the foot-shuffling dance anymore.

None of this was particularly helpful. I was left staring at my daughters, who were bumping into the fridge and repeating what sounded suspiciously like "she gon call me baby booter."

I didn't know what a baby booter was, but I knew I was deeply afraid of it.

[IMAGE PLACEHOLDER: Toddler in organic cotton looking confused at a tablet screen]

The moment I discovered the trap music connection

I spent an hour on Google while they napped (page 47 of my parenting book suggests you use nap time to center yourself with deep breathing, which I find deeply unhelpful when there's an internet mystery to solve). Turns out, they were trying to mimic a massive TikTok trend. The phrase they were mangling was "she gon call me Baby Buddha."

Some inventive internet person took a rather explicit rap song by an artist named NBA YoungBoy, layered it over what sounds like the background music to a brightly coloured Roblox game, and unleashed it upon the algorithm. People misheard the lyrics. They started posting videos of themselves doing this disjointed, staring-into-space dance, calling it the Baby Boo Syndrome. And somehow, through the dark magic of auto-playing videos while I was briefly distracted trying to clean mashed banana off the ceiling, my twins absorbed it.

Suddenly, my living room had become a miniature nightclub for a song that heavily references codeine, firearms, and gang activity. I felt like my fatherly dignity was draining out of me faster than my bank account at a soft play centre.

The absurdity of it all is staggering. One twin is the clear ringleader of this operation, stomping her little foot on the beat, while the other one just sort of spins in a circle and yells "call me baby" at the cat. They don't know they're referencing controlled substances. They just think it's a fun song about a ghost or a shoe. And there I'm, standing in the middle of it all, covered in dried porridge, wondering if I should call the authorities on myself.

What the GP actually said about screen time

I brought this up at our next health visitor appointment, trying to sound casual, as if my children weren't actively rehearsing for a rap video in the waiting room. Our GP, a lovely woman who always looks incredibly tired, sighed deeply. She didn't quote any rigid rules at me. She just muttered something about how our brains aren't really built to process fifty wildly different videos a minute.

She mentioned that the American Academy of Pediatrics sort of vaguely hopes we sit and watch these videos with our kids, rather than using the screen as a digital dummy. It's called co-viewing. The idea is that if your child starts chanting "she gon call me baby boo" while doing a zombie walk, you're right there to intercept it, change the channel, and perhaps loudly sing 'The Wheels on the Bus' until the memory is overwritten.

I suppose that makes sense in theory. In practice, I'm usually just trying to boil a kettle without someone setting the dog on fire. Still, it made me realise I needed to pay a bit more attention to what they were absorbing, even if the music sounded like an innocent ice cream truck.

Moving from internet baby booters to actual baby booties

I couldn't control the sheer weight of the internet, but Dave's pub advice did get me thinking about their actual feet. If I was going to be subjected to this endless dancing, I at least wanted to protect their toes from the unforgiving London floorboards.

This led me down another rabbit hole of medical anxiety. I had assumed that once they started walking—and violently dancing—they needed sturdy, heavily structured shoes indoors. Not so, apparently. My paediatrician strongly hinted that infants and toddlers do much better wandering around barefoot. It has something to do with the fact that they're still figuring out where their bodies are in space, and shoving their feet into stiff leather boots messes with their balance.

When it's freezing in the flat, though, bare feet aren't really an option. We compromise with soft-soled footwear that mimics being barefoot while keeping the frostbite at bay.

If you're looking to distract yourself from the terrifying digital landscape by buying actual, physical items that won't teach your kids about gang violence, checking out organic baby clothing might soothe your frazzled nerves.

The wardrobe casualties of the baby boo dance

All this vigorous dancing has a downside, aside from the obvious psychological damage to me. One afternoon, the ringleader twin was throwing shapes so intensely in the kitchen that she experienced a catastrophic nappy failure. It was a blowout of epic proportions, right in the middle of a bass drop.

This is where I've to give a nod to a genuine lifesaver: the Organic Cotton Baby Bodysuit. If you haven't experienced the specific horror of trying to pull a soiled, skin-tight onesie over a toddler's head while they're still trying to do the Baby Boo shuffle, count yourself lucky.

This bodysuit has those little envelope shoulders. You can just pull the whole ruined garment downwards, completely bypassing the hair and the face. It's a feature I wouldn't have cared about before having kids, but now I consider it a feat of engineering on par with the Large Hadron Collider. The fabric is mostly organic cotton with a tiny bit of stretch, so it moves with them when they insist on doing squat-drops to inappropriate rap music. It's brilliant. I bought six.

[IMAGE PLACEHOLDER: Two toddlers wrapped in blue forest blankets looking like tiny burritos]

Desperate measures and wooden distractions

Eventually, I decided the only way to stop the dancing was to immobilize them. I'm joking, mostly. But there's a certain peace that comes with wrapping a toddler up so snugly they literally can't move their arms.

When the internet gets too much, I bundle them both into the Blue Fox in Forest Bamboo Baby Blanket. The pattern is supposed to be very calming and Scandinavian. I don't know if the twins care about Nordic design principles, but the bamboo blend is incredibly soft, and when I wrap them up like twin burritos, the zombie dancing abruptly stops. The blue tones are meant to lower heart rates, though frankly, it's my heart rate that needs lowering after watching them try to breakdance on the rug.

In a further attempt to keep them away from the glowing rectangles that teach them questionable slang, we also set up the Fishs Play Gym Set with Wooden Ring Toys in the corner of the room.

I'll be honest about this one: it's perfectly lovely to look at, and it certainly fits the whole minimalist, sustainable vibe that my wife loves. When they were six months old, it was great. Now that they're two, they mostly just try to dismantle the A-frame and use the wooden rings as weapons against each other. It's well-made enough to survive their attacks, but I think we've slightly aged out of its intended peaceful, Montessori-style grasping practice. If you've a younger baby who isn't yet mobile, it's lovely. If you've twin toddlers, it's basically a small wooden barricade.

Embracing the chaos (because what else is there?)

The truth about raising kids right now is that the outside world is going to seep in, no matter how aggressively you police the Wi-Fi. One day they're happily chewing on a Llama Silicone Baby Teether (which is objectively fantastic, by the way—you can chuck it in the dishwasher when they inevitably drop it in a puddle), and the next day they're quoting drill rap.

I can't completely shield them from every weird trend that flashes across a screen. I can't stop the bloke down the pub from giving me terrible advice. All I can do is buy them decent, soft clothes, hide the iPad when things get out of hand, and pray they forget the tune by next week.

So, if your little one suddenly looks you dead in the eye and says "she gon call me baby booter," just take a deep breath. Hand them a wooden block. Wrap them in a blanket. And maybe pour yourself a very large cup of tea.

If you're dealing with your own tiny dancers and need to upgrade their wardrobe before they outgrow everything they own, browse our organic baby apparel collection and find something that actually withstands the chaos.

Frequently Asked Questions from the Trenches

What exactly is this baby boo syndrome thing?

It's not a real medical syndrome, thank heaven. It's just a viral internet meme where people—and unfortunately, our highly impressionable children—do a stiff, zombie-like dance to a heavily remixed, explicit rap song. They misheard the lyric "Baby Buddha" as "Baby Boo" or "Baby Booter." It's mostly harmless mimicking, but the original song context is definitely not for the under-fives.

Should I take away the iPad if they start repeating weird internet phrases?

My GP politely suggested that throwing the tablet out the window might be an overreaction. It's more about figuring out where they heard it and sitting with them when they watch things. The algorithms are sneaky. One minute it's a cartoon pig jumping in muddy puddles, the next it's a trap music dance compilation. Just keep a closer eye on the autoplay function.

Is it true they shouldn't wear stiff shoes indoors?

According to the medical folks I've spoken to, yes. Barefoot is best for them to learn balance and build the muscles in their feet. When it's too cold for bare toes, stick to soft-soled baby booties or grippy socks. Stiff, heavy shoes basically turn them into tiny, clumsy astronauts trying to walk on the moon.

How do I get a viral TikTok song out of a toddler's head?

You don't. You just have to introduce a more annoying, catchier song to replace it. I highly think aggressively singing the theme tune to whatever upbeat, highly repetitive cartoon you can tolerate until the rap lyrics fade into obscurity. It's a battle of attrition, really.

Do those envelope shoulders on bodysuits actually work?

Yeah, and they'll save your sanity. When a nappy fails and the contents travel north, you don't want to pull that mess over your child's face and hair. Pulling the bodysuit down over their shoulders and off their legs is the only dignified way out of a very undignified situation.