Clap twice if you can hear my voice

I always hated when I was in grade school and teachers did those obnoxious things like say, "Clap twice if you can hear my voice," just to make us stop talking. I had one teacher in bible class that used a cowbell every time we got too loud to signal us to quiet down. One problem with that was that it was just adding another obnoxious sound to the obnoxious sounds of us talking...the other problem was we were in 6th grade and waaaaaay too cool for that.

Nevertheless, the more times I help in the nursery at church, the more often I find myself wanting to say those same things or use those same tricks for behavior modification. I was really nervous to go to Harlingen for rotation because I knew I would see lots of pediatric patients so I was wondering if the teacher within would show up and start telling kids to sit Indian-style and clap twice if they could hear my voice. As it turns out, it's not really the kids who need behavior modification, it's the adults.

In Harlingen, I saw about 30 kids. Even as young as five years old, we could ask them to put their hands on their tummy and they would do so and leave them there for the entire procedure.

True story: Yesterday my friend had to tell her ADULT patient to sit on his hands because he kept flailing when she was trying to give an injection. Very dangerous...very annoying.

In the afternoon another friend had a patient who was (admittedly) in no pain but was feeling some pressure as the student extracted a tooth. Every time an instrument came near her mouth, even before the student actually touched the tool to any part of her, she would scream/moan/whine a little. She was so loud and so persistent that our faculty had to ask her to please use her inside voice because she was making other patients nervous down the hallway.
Let's get biblical...Jesus said, ""I tell you the truth, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven."

But I don't really think he meant we should have to sit on our hands at the dentist...