Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Question for parents of sensitive kids

I don't watch most of what the people around me watch either, so I guess that makes me weird and unsocialised. *Shrug* oh well, I'm fine with that! I was fine with it as a child too. I knew that even if I 'connected' over something I didn't like, it was all so phoney anyway that it didn't matter. People who judge you over some TV show or movie, or whatever? Well, it wasn't much of a loss to me.

Jamie - my DD is not at all worried by loud noises or people but she had already experienced loss before she saw Nemo and did not miss the meaning of those first scenes... Our two children make a classic example of needing to know your own child and what is likely to be ok for them.

I actually agree with you here. I would love my DD to see Spirited Away--I love it, and I think she would too. It's possible that it would be okay...I should review the plot. Scary isn't the issue as much as things featuring cruelty to sympathetic characters or tragic parental death (so weirdly common).

I'm more willing to test something questionable if I think it's worthwhile artistically.


This may be the issue, really. Some kids seem to know this instinctively. DS will ask me to turn "scary" (we're talking a tense episode of Super Why here) things off fairly regularly. DD will see it through because she's interested and THEN be distressed afterwards. DS is generally a lot more self-aware than his sister, so this makes sense.

This last bit reminds me of The Uses of Enchantment: by Bettelheim. He felt that the old, dark fairy tales were of value for children..
To quote wikipedia:
Bettelheim suggested that traditional fairy tales, with the darkness of abandonment, death, witches, and injuries, allowed children to grapple with their fears in remote, symbolic terms. If they could read and interpret these fairy tales in their own way, he believed, they would get a greater sense of meaning and purpose. Bettelheim thought that by engaging with these socially-evolved stories, children would go through emotional growth that would better prepare them for their own futures.

I don't think tragic parental death being common in stories is weird. Parental death, absence, or incapacity is often a prerequisite to set up the essential tension of a mythic story - that the protagonist is utterly alone and without ordinary aid, and must rely on his or her own resourcefulness, courage, and wits, and on unique inherent qualities, and overcome fears and perceived weaknesses, in order to triumph.

Stories are one of the ways that we teach children to become adults: I think that is important to remember. Most stories are intended to give people blueprints of how to live well, how to cope with difficult decisions, how to triumph over evil and adversity when it seems hopeless and impossible. It would be inappropriate to show children going off on adventures to save the world without consulting their parents if their parents were available. It would seriously violate social norms and the enculturating value of the tales to show parents failing to protect their children from evil or potential harm, and to show children acting autonomously without regard for parental wishes or control in the context of an intact family. For stories to serve those purposes effectively, children need to be able to identify with a character who is like them in important ways, but who has to make their own decisions and be responsible for their own actions and safety. If you don't take the parents out of the picture somehow, it is far more difficult to meet those goals.

I agree - so many stories just wouldn't work if there was parent hovering around!

I also totally agree that you need to know your individual child to make those judgements, and even then you might find things that scare them that you never thought would.

I think its always a balancing act!

I'm familiar with the argument that parents must be dispensed of for a good narrative arc, but I don't really buy it. I can think of all kinds of great children's stories where nobody's parents are tragically offed in the first 5 minutes. To wit: Harriet the Spy, The Dark is Rising series, A Wrinkle in Time series, E.B. White's books, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, The Great Brain...all these have children going on great adventures often without parents, but without killing said parents off. Then we have wonderful family-oriented fiction like Judy Blume, Ramona, the wonderful Elizabeth Enright books, All of a Kind Family, Finn Family Moomintroll, Little House on the Prairie...

None of this is to say that I think parental death should be forbidden in children's books or movies. However, I have always found it a little odd the way this is done in material for VERY YOUNG children. Bambi and Nemo come to mind as examples of over-the-top parental death in films aimed at a young audience.