Scary songs for children

We’re still learn­ing how to put Kai to bed, or sim­ply to calm him down. Talk­ing and singing softly is one of the things we find works.

We’ve been singing to Kai some of the songs we know from when we were kids. And yes, we already knew that ‘Twin­kle Twin­kle Lit­tle Star’, ‘Baa Baa Black Sheep’ and The Alpha­bet Song all have the same tune.

But it’s the lyrics of some of the songs that can be scary. Take the Chi­nese ver­sion of Frere Jacques (Are You Sleep­ing Brother John) for instance.

For one, it’s got noth­ing to do with a sleep­ing brother John, but two tigers with what insur­ance com­pa­nies call total dis­abil­i­ties. It goes some­thing like:

Two tigers
Two tigers
Run­ning fast
Run­ning fast
One has no eye(s)
One has no tail
How odd
How odd

Don’t bluff lah, what odd? You ate the tail and eyes for med­i­c­i­nal rea­sons, you Chi­nese children’s song com­poser! That’s why the poor cats are run­ning!

Kai might sleep well after, but I’m more afraid of myself going to bed hav­ing night­mares of deformed tigers.

So I’ve taken to hum­ming instead, but Naomi thinks that’s cop­ping out. She’s cho­sen to make up non­sense lyrics which are not scary like Chi­nese songs are, and which incor­po­rate Kai’s name some­where, so they could go:

Some­thing some­thing Baby Kai, some­thing some­thing Baby Kai.

But she also found what some­one called ‘the best and worst song I’ve? ever heard in my life’, and what’s prob­a­bly gonna be the song we sing to Kai for until we get sick of it: