The Longest Yawn: why a pass-it-on story settles a two-year-old
The Longest Yawn passes one yawn from a bear to the Moon in a single repeating line. Why that repetition calms a two-year-old, what the research says about catching yawns at that age, and how to read each page a little slower than the last.
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The Longest Yawn | A Calming Bedtime Story for Ages 2-5 | Velvet Kids Hour · Velvet Kids Hour · opens on YouTube
The refrain in The Longest Yawn is five words long: a yawn, passed on, hush. It is on every page. The first time, it belongs to one small yawn waking up in the grass on a hill as the sky goes deep and blue. Then Big Bramble the bear catches it, then Ember the fox, Clover the rabbit and Olive the owl, then the village windows, then the stars, and at the end the Moon opens wide and lets out the longest yawn of all. The last little yawn is passed to the child listening. That is the whole book. Nothing else happens in it, and that is deliberate.
I wrote it for the last few minutes before sleep, which is a strange slot for a story. The child is tired but not yet willing. Anything with a plot gives them something to hold on to, a question to stay awake for. A pass-it-on story has no question. The child knows by page three exactly what the next page will say, and that is the mechanic.
Why does a repeating rhythm settle a toddler at bedtime?
A two-year-old's day is mostly things they cannot predict. Bedtime works better as the one part they can. The NHS puts it plainly in its guidance on sleep and young children: "Make sure you have a calming, predictable bedtime routine that happens at the same time and includes the same things every night." A story built on one repeating line is that principle shrunk down to the size of a page. Every spread changes exactly one thing, which animal has the yawn, and keeps everything else the same.
What I have watched happen is that the child stops listening for information and starts listening for the shape. Around the fox, they begin saying "hush" with me. Around the owl, they are saying it before I do. A sentence a child can predict is a sentence they do not have to work at, and not working is most of what falling asleep is.
The yawn is not the tool. The slowing down is the tool, and the yawn is an excuse to do it out loud.
There is a second thing the repetition does, which is give the reader permission to be boring. Most of us speed up when we read aloud, because we can feel the child's attention and want to keep it. A story that is the same line eight times removes the temptation. There is nothing to perform.
Does a two-year-old actually catch a yawn from a story?
Honestly, probably not, and I would rather say so than sell the book on it. A 2010 study in Child Development tested 120 children aged one to six for susceptibility to contagious yawning and found a substantial increase in it at four years old. Below that age it was uncommon. So for a two-year-old, the contagious part of a yawning story is mostly working on the person reading it.
That turns out to be fine, because the reader is the one who sets the pace. If I yawn on the bear's page, my voice drops on the fox's page whether I mean it to or not. The child does not need to catch the yawn. They catch the slower, lower adult who just yawned. With a four- or five-year-old, the yawn itself often lands as well, and the book gets a bit funnier at that age, because they know what is happening to them and try to resist it.
Either way, the story is a device for making the reader go quiet in a way the child can hear.
How do I read it slower on each page?
This is the part I would tell a parent who has just printed the book, because the text does not say it and the pictures cannot. Here is how I read it.
- The hill and the first small yawn: ordinary storytelling voice, ordinary pace. This page sets the baseline everything else drops from.
- Big Bramble the bear: the same line, one notch slower. The pauses at the ellipses get a fraction longer.
- Ember the fox and Clover the rabbit: each one a notch slower again. By the rabbit the pause after "passed on" is a full breath in and out.
- Olive the owl: this is where I let my own yawn happen if it is going to. Not performed. A performed yawn sounds like a performed yawn even to a toddler.
- The village windows and the stars: barely above a whisper. The word "hush" is now longer than the rest of the line put together.
- The Moon: the longest yawn I can honestly do, then the line, then nothing.
- The last page passes the yawn to the child. I read it, close the book, and do not add anything. No "did you like that", no "okay, sleepy time". The story has already said it.
Two things go wrong, and both have a simple answer. The first is a child who wants to do the yawns loudly and turns the book into a game. I let it happen on the bear's page and then say the fox's yawn is quieter than that one, and the rabbit's quieter still. The book's structure does the rest. The second is "again". The NHS advice on the same page is worth keeping in mind: "read only 1 story, then tuck your child in and say goodnight." The story is written to be that one, the last one, so a second reading undoes the slope it just built. I would rather read it slowly once than quickly twice.
What I learned making it is that the calming part of a calming story is almost never the words. It is the pacing the words force on the adult, and a two-year-old can hear pacing long before they can catch a yawn.
