Tommy the Tortoise

Adult: Hey kids! Do you ever get the Gloomies?

Children: Wait! What are the Gloomies?
Adult: well let me tell you!

Imma tell a little story ‘bout a tortoise named Tommy

And he was really bummed cuz he was leaving his mommy
Why? You may ask
Well Tommy was real smart, and he was heading off to college
He was off and, on his way, to gaining some more knowledge.

Tommy got to college and he thought it would be fun

But then he found it hard to get all of his work done
UH-OH!
His grades started slipping, he’s too sad to start his studies
It was hard enough on him because he had no buddies

Tommy started showing some signs of the Gloomies

Sadness, Isolation and he slept poorly
Poor Tommy!
Tommy called his mommy and she had a suggestion
She told him, “pick up some exercise sessions”

Tommy’s exercising made his Gloomies signs lessen

But something was still wrong, he found himself stressin’
Not stress!!
Tommy made a friend and he told him something new
He said working out too hard can be real bad for you!

The next time Tommy exercised and listened to his friend

He went a little softer and it worked out in the end
Yay!
Tommy made more buddies and his grades began to rise
Thought to himself, “wow! what a wonderful surprise”

And this is how the tale of Tommy comes to an end

But don’t be sad, be glad there’s more info in your head
Smile!
So now when you hear about someone with the Gloomies
Just remember Tommy and tell them “listen to me”
 Biopsychology to Children’s Nursery Rhyme

Nursery rhymes date back to thousands of years ago and yet they are still very popular

and fond to many of our hearts. What most of us may not have known then or maybe even now

is, a lot of classic, timeless nursery rhymes thought to depict our childhood and good times are

honestly very dark in the most subtle ways. Often times they did this through euphemisms or

other figurative language. For example, did you know, Ring-a-Round-a-Rosie is actually about

the black plague and people dying? The famous line “ashes, ashes we all fall down” is

accentuating the ashes from cremation and further states everyone is dying. Another example is

the famous rhyme Bah-Bah Black Sheep, which shockingly is actually about a slave picking

cotton for his master and his family, in which the only thing the author did to make the message

subtle was by describing a slave as a black sheep. This makes the nursery rhyme sound like non-

sense instead of having an ulterior motive. You could be wondering why the authors of these

nursery rhymes felt the need to hide messages like these in children media, but the unfortunate

reality is free speech was very limited in the times that the nursery rhymes were written. This is

important because these authors could face social repercussions just from the community,

blacklisted from jobs, or in severe cases, punished by the government.

When doing my genre translation from a biopsychology article to a children’s nursery

rhyme, I definitely had to keep the euphemism aspect in mind when working on it. This actually

proved helpful because although society is opening up more to mental health issues it is

unfortunately very stigmatized and even considered taboo to people therefore introducing this

concept to children can be controversial for some. However, I sincerely believe teaching children

about mental health is important in order for children to develop healthy coping mechanisms

instead of destructive ones; for this reason, I chose to do my translation on how exercising can
improve depression symptoms as long as it has moderate intensity. Since my intended audience

are children of pre-k to the first grade, I tried to keep my presentation of the subject matter quite

simple by following a story line. I started with some background information as stated by the

article, “sixty-one healthy adults were picked from McMaster university and they all

participated in a varying intensity workout regimen”1 but instead of using all of the boldface

confusing words I simply state, “Tommy was real smart and he was heading off to college.” I

chose to do this because a child isn’t going to have and understand the kind of vocabulary in the

first article. Additionally, having that lengthy, confusing, boring material is sure to lose the

interest of the children. Even though my version of the article is truncated, I am carrying the

same message, the study is talking about college students specifically, and that is all kids really

need to know.

Next, I believed it would be a good idea to show the children what the beginnings of

depression may look like. I thought this would be a logical next step because the article, as it is

meant for peers, assumes that the readers already know what depression is right off the bat, but

children might need a bit more help. Children often times need to be guided step by step, which

is why I included, “found it hard to get his work done” and “hard enough on him because he

didn’t have any buddies” so that the children don’t get lost and are still engaged with the story.

This is why I decided to have Tommy’s depression creep up gradually. this additional

background information about Tommy the Tortoise will really help children visualize depression

and how it can develop in early stages. From here I decided it would be a good idea to jump to

1
Paolucci, Emily M., Dessi Loukov, Dawn M.e. Bowdish, and Jennifer J. Heisz. “Exercise Reduces Depression and
Inflammation but Intensity Matters.” Biological Psychology 133 (2018): 79–84.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biopsycho.2018.01.015.
the results of the article since that’s where the lesson and take away for the kids will be. I

deliberately mentioned that “Tommy’s exercising made his Gloomies signs lessen/ but

something was still wrong he found himself stressing” because I feel it is important for the

children to know the whole truth and have accurate information without having to use the

article’s complicated language such as, “University students had a higher stress levels evoked by

the extraneous exercise protocol.”1 Again, big words are very unnecessary when trying to

communicate with and entertain a child. Additionally, this also ensure that they don’t go around

their whole lives with the wrong information, share it and get embarrassed because it’s not

completely true. In this case specifically we wouldn’t want someone to develop depression work

out as hard as they can and get stressed or even gain weight due to inaccurate information.

Along my journey of doing the translation I decided that adding in every detail as

possible, such as methods, heavy procedures and the statistical analysis of the article. I found that

these sections would not be of much use in a children’s nursery rhyme because its tedious and

boring. In addition, since we are still trying to entertain the children, it is important that nursery

rhymes have rhymes, rhythms and remain on the shorter side in order to hold their attention and

so that its catchy and they just find themselves singing and having fun with it. For this reason, I

decided to comprise my nursery rhyme into couplets with breaks of spoken word in each verse.

The rhyming pattern adds musicality to the nursery rhymes and the spoken words such as, “why

you may ask” provide a break from the pattern so that way the children do not get tired of the

same consistent noise and provides an unexpected that is sure to keep a child engaged. With that

being said, children don’t need to hear dense facts like, “ Depression decreased following MCT

(p = 0.005, Co- hen’s d = 0.83) and HIT (p = 0.012; Cohen’s d = 0.73).”1 when it could easily

expressed as, “The next time Tommy exercised and listened to his friend/ He went a little softer
and it worked out in the end”. With the way the article put it you’ll have confused children or

children falling asleep. Kids need things to be kept short and sweet and they have to have a good

happy ending, so they feel the nursery rhyme is good and fun. So not only is it an easier way to

have kids or really anyone understand, it also relays the exact same message.

As someone who has always been around children, babysitting them, basically mothering

them I would say I have a pretty solid idea of how a child’s mind would work and the extent of

their speech and vocabulary. However, it was still extremely difficult to not use bigger words in

the nursery rhyme. In order to be able to accomplish this translation with basically baby words, I

ended up having to cut most of the academic vocabulary in the article. I had to really home in on

what the article stated like, “ Exercise may help to mitigate symptoms of depression by

reducing inflammation…Our results suggest that moderate intensity continuous exercise may

be an optimal intensity when prescribing exercise as medicine for mental health.”1 Which are

all insanely big words that don’t exactly roll off the tongue into something more kid friendly. I

show this in my fourth and fifth verse with words like “lessen” and “found himself stressin”.

Additionally, I also took a sentence from an article saying, “high intensity workouts increase

stress levels due to the physical stress on your body.”1 And just easily stated it as, “working out

too hard can be real bad for you”. Furthermore, as mentioned before, nursery rhymes tend to use

euphemisms in order to mask their darker meanings, thus, I decided to mask the word depression

which is a big scary word and replaced it by saying “the gloomies” instead. This helps to make

this topic of depression and of mental health in general less blunt to the eyes of children and

caretakers that are close by.

Despite these contrasts, I learned that mental health can be taught to kids as long as it is

done right. I was able to simply convey to a preschooler a message that was originally meant for
older academic scholars. People may think its taboo to teach kids about mental health, but

sometimes little kids handle these situations better than adults if taught correctly and accurately.