[newmainer]

Lately, my dd has been crying at certain books. She's a very verbal almost 18 months. First, it was 5 Little Monkeys. I read it very funny-like, but when the mama called the doctor, she got that pathetic, break your heart lower lip quiver and just burst into tears. She did the same thing when my mom read it. It lives at my mom's house so we don't read it often, but it is the strangest thing!

And then, the other night, while reading/singing "hush little baby" (a really nice alternative to the traditional song about buying things- this one is all the things the mama will show and share with baby from nature and around the home) she also burst into tears. Has done it almost every time, adn the funny thing is, she *wants* us to read this book! It's almsot like she has this weird draw to the books that are makign her sad. Has anyone else experienced anything like this?

 

[OTMomma]

My dd also gets upset about a lot of books and rhymes that don't seem like they should be upsetting. She has probably done that since she was about the age of your dd. She hates that we can't put Humpty Dumpty together again, and cries whenever we sing that song, but she still wants to sing it. I look at it as a nice show of empathy that means we have very sensitive children. She sort of goes through cycles with it, there will be a few weeks when she is very easily upset, and then she's fine for a month or 2.

The books that upset her, I ended up putting away for a while because I found her getting upset so distressing. And when I got them back out a month later, she was fine with them.

 

[NoHiddenFees]

Quote:

Originally Posted by newmainer And then, the other night, while reading/singing "hush little baby" (a really nice alternative to the traditional song about buying things- this one is all the things the mama will show and share with baby from nature and around the home) she also burst into tears. Has done it almost every time, adn the funny thing is, she *wants* us to read this book! It's almsot like she has this weird draw to the books that are makign her sad. Has anyone else experienced anything like this?

3yo DD bursts into shrieking sobs at all variants of that song. That and Clementine, Scarborough Fair, and a few others. Any song about things being broken, or about death it seems. Not sure what the problem is with Scarborough Fair... maybe it just sounds sad to her. The funny thing is that books, even those involving a theme of death, have never been a problem.

 

[mogit]

Just yesterday, I was singing Christams carols to my ds, age 3. I finally ran out of carols and sang "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer." Well, it *is pretty awful the way the other reindeer exclude Rudolph because of his red nose, and when DS heard this part, he began to cry. I could see him trying not to, but when I asked if he was OK, he burst into tears! I had to hold him and talk to him about it for over half an hour before he calmed down. And for the rest of the day, he kept coming back to the subject, not crying, but wanting to go over what I had said.

I think children return to books/songs/incidents that have made them cry as a way of working out their feelings and gaining mastery of them. Sometimes, too, a child will repeatedly act out a troubling experience in play. For example, a few months ago, a plumber welding pipes in our attic accidentally set off our smoke alarm. DS really freaked out. He talked about the alarm for weeks afterward. He eventually began to pretend that he was the plumber working with his blowtorch. The more DS talked about and dramatized the experience, the less scary it became for him. Now he is still very interested in alarms (he points them out in stores and restaurants) but he is no longer fearful of ours going off every time he walks past it.

If you think about it, a child's desire to reread an upsetting story or replay a frightening experience is not any different than an adult's need to go over a traumatic experience in his/her head, talk it over with friends, or even discuss it on the Internet! You just have to keep going over the upset until you make sense of it and it loses its power over you.

I don't know what triggered your dd's emotional response to "Five Little Monkeys" or "Hush Little Baby," but it would probably help her to talk about it, or hear you talk about it as best you can. And of course, hold her when she cries. She sounds like a very smart, sensitive little girl!

 

[kama'aina mama]

If you are looking at the book with her every time this happens it could be something about the illustrations that upsets her.

NoHiddenFees: I think all those songs are written in a minor key,which always sounds mournful. Sounds like your DD is sensitive to that. Try singing "When Johnny Comes Marching Home Again"... cheerful lyrics; mournful, minor key melody.

 

[irinam]

Quote:

Originally Posted by kama'aina mama I think all those songs are written in a minor key,which always sounds mournful.

Second that.

Minor key was a thing with my DD, did not have to have words. Even some classical pieces in minor would make her lips quiver.

 

[Daffodil]

When my dd was 11 months, she started to cry every time we got to a certain page in Big Red Barn - a page where it was getting dark, and shadowy animals were heading back to the barn. We put the book away for a while, but tried it again a couple of times over the next couple months. She still got upset about it, and she seemed to be focusing on one particular animal in the picture - a dog that was seen mostly from behind. We had no idea what bothered her about it. She didn't exactly act as if it scared her - she would point to it, and actually touch it with her finger, for instance, which I don't imagine she would want to do if she were scared by it. When she got a little older, we took the book out again, and she was fine with it. I'm hoping someday when she's more verbal she still remembers what bothered her about the picture so she can tell us.