Tap-Tap

Tap-Tap found her steady beat in the quietest, coziest place of all.

When she was a tiny mouse, she couldn't sleep one night — everything felt jumbly and fast inside her. So she curled up close and listened, and she heard something slow and even and sure: thump-thump... thump-thump... — a heartbeat. Steady. Never rushing, never dragging. Just... keeping on.

"It made me feel so safe," Tap-Tap says. "That steady thump, going and going, the same every time." From then on she started tapping that steady, heartbeat pace with her own little foot — and it made the jumbly feelings settle right down. "A steady beat is like a heart," she likes to say. "It just keeps going, calm and cozy." She's tapped it ever since.

Today, Squeak brings the kid to the rhythm-corner to visit Tap-Tap. Squeak is right there — the band-leader — and a grown-up too.

"Watch Tap-Tap's foot," Squeak says. "Then YOU tap. Steady beat, keep going. Use your foot, your hand, your knee, your tambourine — any tapping is tap-tapping. Match Tap-Tap's beat."

Tap-Tap taps a steady, cozy pace, and the kid taps along — and a grown-up can tap too; the whole family can tap together, because tapping is fun together. And here's the most important part: Tap-Tap never says "you tapped too fast" or "you missed the beat." Tapping at all is tap-tapping success — every single time. If the kid's beat is faster or slower than hers, that's still tapping, still wonderful; Tap-Tap just keeps her own beat going steady, and the kid taps along however feels good. She'll never grade a beat. If the kid wants the tambourine, she unclips it and hands it right over — shake it, bang it, tap it, any tambourine-noise is good tambourine-noise. The point is moving and feeling the beat, never matching it perfectly.