How to Freak Out Children

Passover will soon be upon us. I discovered that my family was not going to be hosting a 2nd night seder, and came up with the idea to host a "children's seder" for my daughter and some other families with toddlers and babies. As such I went looking for some resources...

Oh. Dear.

There was a thread about this topic on my local parenting listserv. Someone suggested this Haggadah, We Tell It To Our Children. They said their family loved it - it has puppets and songs, and a whole play to act out.

So I went to look. Many songs in the sample pages are terrible and hokey. But one song...oh that one song...

I swear this song is one of those "scar kids for life" kind of experiences.

It is verse 10 of their plague song. Maybe it's better if you can see the other 9 verses? Maybe?

Let me describe the page. On the left page, there is this Stalinist/Uncle Sam looking Moses character. He's a flat picture in a box, except for the creepy 3D-looking arm in the "I Want You" pose.

Then there is verse 10 of the plague song, to the tune of "She'll Be Coming Round The Mountain":

G-d will give you this last chance to let us go;
G-d will give you this last chance to let us go.
As midnight passes by-y,
All your firstborn sons will die-ie;
And your people will cry out if we can't go.

Now, I'm not the kind of Mom who hides all the scary or unpleasant things from her kids. The stories I tell my daughter go plenty dark. And I never planned to gloss over this aspect of the Passover story.

But...

Cheerily singing about how all the boys are going to die? That's...special.

Just wow.

(Here's the sample page if you want to see it for yourself!)