Sensitivity

Ruby Gloom

My two have always been sensitive to music, especially in a movie or TV setting. When Abby was very small, she would say things like, "This is vewy not good music" during intense (for preschoolers) musical themes. Scenes where a character is afraid, or is depicted as a Bad Guy, or is about to make a Noble Sacrifice... Abby would always pick up on that from the music. I'd hate to think how she would have reacted to - say - this theme at the age of three or four. And these days, in her Perky Goth fashion, she likes the quirky music often associated with Dark-Is-Not-Evil  (and usually Girl Power) characters, like Wednesday of The Addams Family and Raven of the Teen Titans and Ruby Gloom. She has an eclectic taste in music; she loves everything from Oingo Boingo to Stravinsky. Now she does. But when she was Lizzy's age, intense music was scary.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
For Lizzy, it's not so much the intensity as it is the key. I was expanding my usual repertoire of Lullabies from Show Tunes (Summertime, for instance, and Good Night Ladies) tonight. I started in on the score of Fiddler on the Roof - it has lots of nice quiet bedtimey songs-  and she started to cry. "What's the matter, baby?"

"I don't like the song because it's sad."

"I'm sorry, Lizzy; the song is a little sad, but that's because the girl who sings it in the movie is growing up and going away with the man she's going to marry".

"Not the wuhds,  mama, the music of the song!"

I can only assume that the issue is that the song in question is in D-minor key. Because this sort of thing has happened before under similar circumstances. Poor sensitive baby.