Lullaby ---> Screaming blue murder? What's going on here?

[AutumnAir]

I'm posting this here because I don't think it's specifically a 'toddler' issue, and I would welcome ideas from mamas of older kids too. However, if it's in the wrong place, mods feel free to move.

Okay, so this has appeared over the last couple of months. DD loves nursery rhymes and songs and we sing quite a few to her. My saving grace is a big book full of lovely rhymes, songs and stories (most of which I'd lost in the dark recesses of my memory, such as it is!) There are heaps in there, and she has some particular favourites, so some get read/sung a lot, others hardly ever if at all.

A couple of months back we came across the song "Hush little baby" - you know the one - "mama's going to buy you a mocking bird.." etc. I started singing it and DD started crying. I chalked it up to my atrocious singing voice, stopped and moved on. Then we heard it on a CD of lullabies a couple of weeks later and DD *really* got upset. DH had the same reaction one night when he came across it and started to sing it too.

Tonight was the worst. We were doing the usual bedtime routine of her flipping through the book and stopping on the ones she wants me to sing/recite. She stopped on this one and I asked her "Are you sure? This is the song that makes you sad sometimes." She nodded her head yes, yes, yes. So I started to sing it.

I didn't even get to the end of the first line before she was sobbing uncontrollably, and shaking as though terrified. It was so bad I ended up crying too It took ages to calm her down again - she was clearly scared and heartbroken.

What on earth could possibly be causing this?

[MusicianDad]

My guess is she just doesn't like that song. I can't really blame her. I mean, everything the child gets in that song is a lemon. I never much liked it myself to be honest. It's kind of a downer.

[sapientia]

that's really interesting! That is the song that I have always sung my kids and it has never failed to calm them. Past life issue maybe? Poor thing! It would make me cry too, to see one of my kids react like that.
That one should go in the baby book!

[galincognito]

isn't it crazy how some things affect kids? i remember when my sister was a baby, she loved to watch me practice my violin; she was completely enraptured with the whole thing. except for one song; that one always made her scream! i would switch right away to a different one and she'd calm right down. it was the strangest thing.

[BellaClaudia]

As much as I liked the Good Night Moon book..
I really trashed the dvd as soon as I saw the scary parts on it
I was carlesly playing dvd when my dd was watching it
and it has tons of scary stuff..

little kids tell what scares them at night..

and worse part is how they display the

"hash little baby" song... the animation that goes with it
was plain scary from my perspective to my little then dd...

so if you never let your LO of your side then she probably did
not watch it to have associations of this sort but if someone
showed it to her wile in their care.. she might remember?..


my other thought is that my DD also has some lullabys that
she did not like as a little one as she would get scared of
some words that seemed innocent to me at first..

as like.. who in their right mind would put rock a baby on
a tree top and then it would go down??? oh come on..
It took me a while to understand why my dd was crying on that one ..
but then again people in the yester years had different ideas
of how to sooth babies.. by scaring them to sleep.

so.. back to hash little baby..

your little one might have some word - image association
like maybe she gets upset why someone actually does not
want her to say A word. as in.. we after all encourage them
to speak all day so all of the sudden it is "hush little baby don't say a word"
like some sort of scare.

other then that she might not understand the word hash in all this and
have to her totally different meaning?..

or she might get plain upset over what happens to those things in the story..
my DD at about 2 would get totally upset over things on TV that would look innocent and be in innocent kid dvds like baby enistein.. or curious george..
anyting that broke, fell, anybody in trouble..

so maybe this song is actually hitting her sensitive buttons because
when you think of it it is really one big litanny of mishaps..
this stops shinning.. this breaks, this fells over.. whatever..
so maybe for her is not so much about what pappa will buy next but
more of that first part what happens to the objects that baby gets..

that song is deep :-).. maybe to deep for little ones after all...

I did not like first time I have heard it and it came across to me as
inapropriate but since it was on cd and dd did not mind I was okay with it
but not my favorite..

when your little one will be able to communicate ask her thing by thing
if this or that upsets her and suggest her and you might be surpised by answers...

[Zenful]

My first thought was that it's a past life issue...or it could be something about the tune that disturbs her.

When my son was little he would also scream and cry whenever his dad or I would sing "Old McDonald"...now he loves it, go figure I think the tune rubbed him the wrong way when he was younger, but now he's more used to different sounds and melodies so it's not as disturbing (he's 2.5 now by the way).

[Just1More]

My dd never liked Brahm's lullaby. It made her cry everytime, too. I think around one year until about a year ago it would make her cry. When she got bigger she told us that it made her very sad. Even humming the melody would get her.

Now, at 4, she watched Mary Poppins and declared that she loves lullaby songs. I sang some for her, and then I sang that one to see what would happen (I hadn't sang it in a LONG time, since I knew it bothered her). She cuddled into her pillow with a sappy smile. When I told her that it used to make her cry she thought that was hilarious. "Why?!?!?!" she wanted to know.

[milkybean]

I don't know why she indicated she wanted to hear it, but it sounds like the lyrics are just not something she wants to hear.

And yeah, as someone said, the gifts in the song are "lemons", just not great gifts. And it's telling the baby to not talk/communicate.

The first time I sang "rockabye baby" to my son, he was around 4 years old. The English language "lullabies" we sang to him weren't traditional at all, they were songs that could be soft and amused us when he was little. Hubby sings him Korean songs that he likes, still. Nowadays I mainly just sing him the tune of "frere jacque" (or however that's spelled), with personalized lyrics telling him that I love him. For whatever reason, I started singing rockabye baby some months back, and he was sleepy, but halfway through he popped his head up and stared at me, with the most stern "what on EARTH are you saying to me????" look on his face. I really thought about the song and yeah, it's awful!

So she's probably just hearing those lyrics and hating them, but that still doesn't explain why she indicated she wanted to hear it.

[ssh]

The only song my DD has ever liked to hear sung when sleepy is Somewhere Over The Rainbow. She loves techno and electronica though. It calms her down or puts her to sleep depending on if she's tired or just annoyed.

[AutumnAir]

No, I've never really liked that song myself. It smacks of materialism and gift-giving to avoid meeting actual needs. And there are things that DD doesn't like. Quite a lot of things, actually, and she's very opinionated about it too. And will sometimes even throw a tantrum if I don't stop/turn off/take away the offending item quickly enough.

But that's not what's going on here at all. She is honestly both heartbroken and utterly terrified at the same time, at the mere beginning of this song.

I would think that it was very bad memory associations (unfortunately she's had some ) but apart from the forced separation in the hospital after our traumatic birth she's never been away from me for any length of time. Since I seriously doubt that the nurses in the hospital would have bothered singing lullabies to DD (and being Czech would have been very unlikely to know that song!) I can be as sure as anyone can be that she'd never heard that song until I sang it to her first.

So, although I'm pretty sceptical, I'm looking at 'past life trauma' as a potential reason for this. I feel a bit silly even thinking about it, but honestly the intensity of her reaction is just incredible unless you see it for yourself (and DD is high needs, so I'm well-accustomed to intensity but this is just *so* much more).

If it is a past life thing, what do you think I can/should do? Obviously my first instinct would be to just avoid it in the hopes that she'll 'grow out of it' but what if she actually requests it, as she did last night? Should I say no? We can't avoid it entirely as it's in her favourite book - she loves to flick through it and takes it to bed with her. Is it potentially something she needs to 'work through'? She's not terribly verbal yet (19 months) so I can't just ask her about it. Any suggestions?

[HappilyEvrAfter]

Originally Posted by AutumnAir

So, although I'm pretty sceptical, I'm looking at 'past life trauma' as a potential reason for this. I feel a bit silly even thinking about it, but honestly the intensity of her reaction is just incredible unless you see it for yourself (and DD is high needs, so I'm well-accustomed to intensity but this is just *so* much more).

As silly as it seems to some people, I wouldn't count this out either.
When my kiddo was old enough to talk he started explaining some things that were well above his level - RE: intellectually and life experience.
He explained in detail a drowning car crash and the last moments of breathing with no fear...just a wistful longing...it was eerie the first time. It explained alot of his water anxieties up to that point.
As he gets older it all seems to be fading into "forgetfulness", but there was def some risiduals left in his soul.
And if she's high needs in this life, then it will all be heightened and even more frightful.

Sorry, hope that doesn't creep you out. It may not be the case here, but if nothing else explains it, then....

[sunflowergirll]

OMG!! My 2.5 DD did the same thing! She would beg to hear the song and then start crying hysterically. When questioned about it, she could only say "it makes me sad." I don't know why. After hearing the song over and over for a few days (per request), she stopped reacting.

Wow, wierd.

[EnviroBecca]

I have feelings like that (although I'm able to control my outward reaction, now) about the song "Leaving on a Jet Plane", not because of anything about the song itself but because I happened hear it for the first time when I was deeply upset and frightened by something a boy at school had said to me. I was about 7 years old then, so I did understand why the song got this "stain" for me, but nonetheless it's a much stronger, creepier feeling than it has any right to be.

Past life, maybe, but another possibility is that your daughter happened to hear this song for the first time in some context when she was very upset, and even if you were with her at the time, the song just didn't register with you at all because to you it's a familiar, sort of generic baby song.

I think you should avoid letting her hear the song for at least a year or so.