Children lost and found

[ishai_wallace]

Three out of the last four nights I have be woken up by the Small Person calling out "Abba, where are you?" This is unusual. In general, the Small Person goes to bed in his own bed. We read him the customary three books, we generally allow for negotiations for a fourth, and then there is snuggling and sleeping. Sometime between midnight and three

Comments

[lucidsavant]

De-lurking to add another item to your final list. Both nights the Small Person fell asleep before the end of the story, right? As a children's literature scholar I think this is significant. Our culture demands that children's literature have happy endings - the Small Person missed the resolution of the stories. It might help his sleep disturbances if you share the endings (or remind him of them if he already knows), so his imagination has more information on ways to happily resolve the scary situations.

Thanks for sharing this story - it was very interesting. I love thinking about the way children learn and think and exist!

[ishai_wallace]

Thank you for this.

It's interesting, The Green Children does not have a happy ending. The boy dies in the first year longing for his green home, and the girl eventually learns English, and is able to tell the people who found her about where she comes from. With time she learns to eat the foods of this world and becomes a paler green, she marries, but she is still often found by the Wolfpits (where she and her brother were first found) searching for a way home. Strangely, I think that's partly why I liked it as a child.

Still, I really apprecite the comment and the thoughtfulness behind it. Do we know each other in real life?

[avnerd]

I wonder how much the small person we have weekly dates with picks up from the stories I read him since I don't get to spend every day (or even overnight, yet) with him. I've mostly been doing tons and tons of Dr. Seuss books with him but lately he has been very ammenable to my reading from books that are not picture books and so I've been reading him these feminist fairy tales from around the world - Maid of the North - that I had when I was young. Some of those stories are dark and do involve babies going missing for a bit (they always come back) and I'll be curious to see if any of that comes back around in playtime/conversation. Your post certainly made me more aware of it and watchful