I've mentioned before that Elena's a fan of the Claymation Pingu video shorts. We watch them on YouTube. She's pretty much a fan of all things penguin, including a couple stuffed animals and books featuring penguin characters.
YouTube, being the time-waster that it is, offers up new suggestions based on what other things you've watched before. Since we watch a lot of Pingu, we get a lot of other suggestions for penguin animation. Yesterday we tried out this one.
And Elena was completely grief-stricken by it.
If you don't feel like clicking the link, let me hasten to add that the video doesn't seem like anything much. It's a loop of bouncy music, with splices of animated penguins line-dancing and one penguin determined to head south. It's a long loop - ten hours - but with only about 2-3 minutes of original content that gets repeated over and over.
We only watched five minutes of this video, and it ended with Elena sobbing. She was completely distraught for probably half an hour. Holding her, moving to a quiet room, deep breathing then a walk outside helped. She wasn't able to articulate just what it was about the video that upset her, except the big penguin "was scary."
We rewatched it after Elena went to bed. I think the issue here is that there's a baby penguin who tries to keep the big, unhappy looking penguin from taking his suitcase and walking away. Yet despite the baby's many efforts at being cute, charming and funny, the big penguin just... keeps... leaving. Over and over and over. And then it shows the baby penguin looking very sad and alone. Over and over and over.
The video obviously pushed a button, and it was probably the fear of abandonment that many adopted children have. (....We think. Or maybe it was grief from something else that happened in her early life?) We know she must have these fears, so in retrospect her reaction isn't so surprising. It's a nuanced reading of the video, based on her experiences, that makes her reaction what it was. And it's a reminder that there are things inside her head that may take a long time to manifest.
YouTube, being the time-waster that it is, offers up new suggestions based on what other things you've watched before. Since we watch a lot of Pingu, we get a lot of other suggestions for penguin animation. Yesterday we tried out this one.
And Elena was completely grief-stricken by it.
If you don't feel like clicking the link, let me hasten to add that the video doesn't seem like anything much. It's a loop of bouncy music, with splices of animated penguins line-dancing and one penguin determined to head south. It's a long loop - ten hours - but with only about 2-3 minutes of original content that gets repeated over and over.
We only watched five minutes of this video, and it ended with Elena sobbing. She was completely distraught for probably half an hour. Holding her, moving to a quiet room, deep breathing then a walk outside helped. She wasn't able to articulate just what it was about the video that upset her, except the big penguin "was scary."
We rewatched it after Elena went to bed. I think the issue here is that there's a baby penguin who tries to keep the big, unhappy looking penguin from taking his suitcase and walking away. Yet despite the baby's many efforts at being cute, charming and funny, the big penguin just... keeps... leaving. Over and over and over. And then it shows the baby penguin looking very sad and alone. Over and over and over.
The video obviously pushed a button, and it was probably the fear of abandonment that many adopted children have. (....We think. Or maybe it was grief from something else that happened in her early life?) We know she must have these fears, so in retrospect her reaction isn't so surprising. It's a nuanced reading of the video, based on her experiences, that makes her reaction what it was. And it's a reminder that there are things inside her head that may take a long time to manifest.
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