Care & Feeding: My sister sang a CREEPY LULLABY to my baby

[minoanmiss]

Dear Care & Feeding:

I have a 4-month-old daughter, “Matilda.” Like most infants, she’s wonderful, but also a little handful, so I’ve been very fortunate to have family who is both able and willing to step in and help. Somewhat surprising was an offer to help from my older sister, (She’s 35, I’m 29) “Harriet.” She has been pretty openly child-free and never really seemed to like kids, but last week she offered to watch my daughter when I had to run out for some errands.

I went, errands were done, Harriet didn’t report any issues, and when I got back she was even singing to my daughter. Specifically, I heard her sing “Twinkle twinkle little brat. I will feed you to the cat.” We do not in fact have a cat, and it was sung in the same sort of calming, singsong voice twinkle “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star” is usually sung in.

Needless to say, this sparked an argument between us, and our husbands got pulled into it as well. Harriet’s of the position that it doesn’t mean anything, a child that young doesn’t understand words anyway, and she got bored singing the same lines over and over again. I don’t want her near my daughter anymore, but a lot of my family thinks I’m overreacting. Am I? I don’t actually think she’ll mistreat my child or feed her to a cat, but I think her attitude towards children is enough to not leave mine with her anymore.

—Possibly Overreacting

Dear Possibly Overreacting,

I am genuinely sorry to you for the way I laughed when I read this question. I know this felt like a violation of the way you view your beloved child, and I know you are only looking out for your child’s best interests. But some people are more precious about kids than others, and it sounds to me like you and Harriet are just very different in that respect. Some people see childhood as a time of sacred innocence, to be protected at all costs. Others view children just as slightly smaller people who are sometimes assholes. Neither POV is wrong, but just because someone doesn’t treat children as sacrosanct beings does not mean they would ever hurt one, or even that they hate them.

Even people who don’t particularly like children are still capable of understanding and respecting their importance in your life because they love you. If Harriet is someone who doesn’t like being around children, it makes her offer to babysit even more meaningful. She’s willing to do something she doesn’t enjoy as an act of service and love to you and your child. She is willing to sit and sing to your—admittedly somewhat difficult—baby for long enough to get tired of the song, despite the fact that it’s not really her thing.

Your baby doesn’t know what lyrics Harriet was singing. All she saw was a person who was caring for her and singing to her in a soothing voice. As long as Harriet is a good person and you trust her beyond her dark sense of humor, I wouldn’t make too much of it.

—Emily

Comments

Creepy Lullabies Requested

[minoanmiss]

I know Seanan jotted down a couple...

Re: Creepy Lullabies Requested

[melannen]

Hush-a-bye baby, on the tree top,
When the wind blows, the cradle will rock;
When the bough breaks, the cradle will fall,
Down will come baby, cradle and all...

Re: Creepy Lullabies Requested

[ellen_fremedon]

Sofðu unga ástin mín.

Re: Creepy Lullabies Requested

[beable]

One of my all time favourites

lyrics: http://www.ovff.org/pegasus/songs/close-your-eyes.html

Author performing it: https://youtu.be/hpjoarVG8jY

Re: Creepy Lullabies Requested

[harpers_child]

Direct from my childhood:
The Baby Tree - Jefferson Starship (horrified dad's mom because "they take only babies that smile!?! do the crying ones just die of exposure?" "it's a song about babies growing on trees. it's not that literal.")

Mother's Lament - Cream (about a poor mother's baby dying in a bath)

St. James Infirmary - traditional blues (I went down to St. James Infirmary / Saw my baby there / Stretched out on a long white table / So sweet, so cold, so fair)

Baby's on Fire - Brian Eno

Evelyn a Modified Dog - Frank Zappa (Zappa is shockingly good at getting small children to sleep. Has to be vinyl not tape, cd, or digital. Can be faked with digital recording of a vinyl record.)

Re: Creepy Lullabies Requested

[delight]

I definitely came here to suggest Mother's Lament and find that the person who beat me to it also cites Zappa and Eno. Excellent taste!

Re: Creepy Lullabies Requested

[harpers_child]

Having a Dad who has a Special Interest in various kinds of music pays off.

Re: Creepy Lullabies Requested

[katiedid717]

Not a lullabye exactly, buuuut The Lady and the Crocodile was a hit when I was a kid, and then when I was 19 I worked at a daycare and taught it to a class of 3-year-olds

[conuly]

Half the traditional lullabies I know involve babies being fed to wild animals, abandoned in the woods, or otherwise left to die.

LW is very much overreacting here. However, this is par for the course for parents of infants, especially *first time parents of infants*. People can get so intense about everything during those months.

[melannen]

My mom recently taught me and my cousins a traditional game she used to make cranky babies laugh: you lay them on their back and tickle them all over and say "pluck the baby! pluck the baby!" and then you hold their feet and do bicycle motions with their legs and say "cook the baby! cook the baby!" and then you nuzzle their tum and say "eat the baby! eat the baby!"

Never fails to get a smile from babies and young toddlers, never fails to horrify anyone over the age of ten!

[conuly]

I used to *read* the baby - run my hands back and forth, and then TURN THE PAGE by flipping the baby over.

[watersword]

Like, would this person be okay with their sister singing the traditional "rock-a-bye" lullaby, in which "The cradle will fall, / And down will fall baby / Cradle and all." Out of a tree.

[jadelennox]

Neither POV is wrong, but just because someone doesn’t treat children as sacrosanct beings does not mean they would ever hurt one, or even that they hate them.

In fact, people who do see children as innocent pure beings can be horrific abusers for any number of reasons. Which is not to say that they are likely to be -- most people don't suck! But specifically, nether viewpoint makes you any safer around kids.

[annotated_em]

Okay, but I want to know what comes after feeding the infant to the cat, lyrically speaking. Given my own feline overlords, it would be something like "Then he'll hurk upon the mat / And you'll make a mighty splat" but I'm curious to know where Harriet was going with this whole filk.

[ambyr]

I used to sing “The Ballad of Mack the Knife” (and not the more sanitized translation that hit it big on the radio in the 50s) to my niece when she was a baby, because it’s one of two songs to which I actually know all the lyrics. I am extremely grateful that her mom just gratefully accepted someone else was calming the baby and never made a moment’s fuss that I was singing about rape and murder (and I did stop before she started talking, heh; now she’s stuck with The Circle Game if she wants singing to).

[ellen_fremedon]

My mother had three lullabies for me, for the same reason: "The Long Black Veil," "Old Stewball," and "The Man Who Never Returned."

[affreca]

Similar. My mother's limited repertoire included "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot" and "Where Have all the Flowers Gone".

[kaberett]

My grandmother sang that to my mother, too, in the German!

[lethe1]

A-ha! So *that* is why Harriet suddenly offered to babysit! She had nefarious plans! I think we can all breathe a sigh of relief that LW came back just in time so Harriet's plans were thwarted.

[jerusha]

My brother and SIL were this precious about their kids, and it hasn't gotten any better. I'm hoping the niblings regress towards the mean and turn out to be fairly decent humans. But since I'm Harriet in this situation, all my sympathies to her.

[movingfinger]

A moment of awe here at a new mother so hashtag blessed that she can fire a free babysitter without worrying about finding another, just because she doesn't like their lullabies.

[mommy]

Isn't half the fun of babysitting actual babies just being able to sing nonsense songs and horrendously out of place songs to an audience who won't know the difference?

[p_cocincinus]

I thought that was half the fun of parenting actual babies too - my husband and I used to sing wildly inappropriate stuff to Bug when she was new, because most actual children's music is genuinely terrible.

[ashbet]

Gawd, yes — K was obsessed with the Beach Boys’ “Kokomo,” for some demented reason (don’t ask me why, as a dedicated Goth/metalhead, I knew all the lyrics), but I mostly played/sang the music I listened to… and she grew up to have excellent taste!

I will never stop laughing at the memory of “Play ‘Stigmata,’ Mommy!” in a toddler voice coming from the carseat in back :D

[lunabee34]

I'll never forget my oldest announcing to my conservative, evangelical family at a family reunion that her favorite song was "Feels Like Making Love."

*dies laughing*

[ashbet]

HAHAHAH!!! :D

[ethelmay]

One of my husband's favorite songs in elementary school was Come On, Baby, Light My Fire. Pretty sure that was my FIL's fault (which is pretty funny as his usual taste in music ran to stuff like Schubert).

[lunabee34]

Heeee!

[finch]

Okay that's ADORABLE though.

[rmc28]

My second child reliably went to sleep to the AC/DC Iron Man 2 album when he was a baby. Something about loud rhythms.

(The first one liked the Peatbog Faeries a lot, also most likely the rhythms, but they're not as obviously inappropriate lyrics)

[finch]

Last time she was really upset I discovered that she's still soothed by the Barenaked Ladies songs I used to put her to sleep as an infant.

[joyeuce]

I was in a phase of being obsessed with Shostakovich's symphonies and Brahms's German Requiem when my daughter was born.

I also worked out that, at about the time it's thought babies in utero start to hear their mothers' voices, I was rehearsing Tippett's Child of Our Time - so one of the earliest things she would have heard was me singing "Burn down their houses! Beat in their heads! Break them in pieces on the wheel!"

She's ten and seems to be doing OK.

[purlewe]

YUP.

[hyperfocused]

Not a song, more of a rhythmic rhyme, but my mom, and two older siblings regaled me with “Fudge, Fudge, Call the Judge,
Mama’s got a brand new baby.
Wrap it up in tissue paper,
Throw it in the elevator,
First floor, stop,
Second floor, stop.
Third floor, toss it out the door.
Mama hasn’t got a new baby anymore.

[conuly]

Hanging over the garden wall
That's where I let the baby fall
My mother came out
She gave me a clout
I said "Who do you think you're bossing about?"

[xenacryst]

Sleep my child and monsters eat you
All through the night
They will know just where to greet you
All through the night

Tiny forks and tiny knives
Good for eating tiny lives
Served up with some chopped up chives
All through the night

[lethe1]

Ooh, this is a good one!

[serafina20]

Not a lullaby, but we frequently serenaded my baby sister with "Bottle of Wine" by Fireballs.

I just always remember that scene from Three Men and a Baby, where Tom Selleck is reading the car magazine to the baby in soft tones. It's not what you say, it's how you say it that matters.

[ethelmay]

Ogden Nash has some poem where (IIRC) he rhymes "used to it" with "found he can get the baby to sleep by reading Proust to it."