I recently finished The Forgotten Garden by Kate Morton and I must say tht I truly loved it. In fact, it has been a long time since I have been so crazy about a book...Ross didn't know what to do with me because every time he would go looking for me I would be hidden away somewhere reading my book. Even Lucas was affected by my obsession because I would read while he nursed and I wouldn't want him to stop! Which leads me to a great quote from this novel...
"Cassandra always hid when she read, though she never quite knew why. It was as if she couldn't shake the guilty suspicion that she was being lazy, that surrendering herself so completely to something so enjoyable must surely be wrong."
The story revolves around the mystery of the identity of a little girl who appears on the docks in Australia after sailing from England - no identification, no parents, and amnesia from a bump on the head during the boat ride. Her "adoptive" parents tell her about her mysterious appearance when she grows up and she attempts to figure out who she really is...only to be stopped by circumstances beyond her control. Her granddaughter continues the search after her death and the reader discovers the truth along with the characters as the story is woven across three generations.
I would love to talk more about the complexities of this story and the beautiful writing of Kate Morton (seriously, there are so few authors today with the ability to command the English language as she does). But that would bore too many people...so, instead I would like to open up a discussion about one notion suggested in this book...that children love to be terrified by a good fairy tale and that they will be no worse for the wear - in fact they will be better.
I remember loving scary stories when I was little, the thrill of a character having to escape or overcome the evil in the world (that is the moral of most stories, right? - good triumphs over evil). Looking back now, some of my childhood favorites were terrifying (Come on, a magical sea witch out to destroy you and your family, that is scary stuff!). I even had a friend who wasn't allowed to watch certain movies or read certain books because the story was too scary. I didn't understand this at the time but as a parent, I now know the desire to protect your children from all that is scary in this world because in some ways that is part of the job description. I think there must be a fine line between protection and overprotection. Is it true that"...children aren't frightened by stories; ... their lives are full of far more frightening things than those contained in fairy tales"? Maybe children need to learn about scary situations from a story in order to learn about coping mechanisms for their future?
Thankfully, Lucas is in the discovery phase of life so I don't have to worry about all of this for quite some time... so let me turn it to you - what do you think about the notion of protecting children from scary stories? Is it best to allow them to learn from a fairy tale the nature of good and evil? Where do you walk along the line of protection for your children?
First, let me start by telling you what I have learned from my Job. There are a wide range of personalities and each one learns in different ways. Some people learn simply by listening to others experiences and some only learn by having to experience things themselves. Which is why there are people who wear seat belts (those that know better from other’s experiences and those who have actually been in an accident and learned that way) and those who don’t wear safety belts because they just don’t believe. I think all parents understand, they can tell their kid not to do something for their own good until they are blue in the face but sometimes they have to let go and let the child figure it out through whatever the consequence is (and praying that your child doesn’t have to become a drug addict to understand the consequences of drugs, this is enough to make me not want to be a parent). Anyway, this seems like a bit off the subject but…
ReplyDeleteYes kids will experience things in real life way scarier than a giant octopus sea witch with a lightning bolt throwing trident. But, in my opinion, it’s not necessarily the scariness that they crave, but more the happy ending. Kids need to know that eventually all good wins over evil in order to believe in themselves and their life. And in my section above, some kids may learn from these stories but some will not, depending on their nature but they all want to think they can triumph over whatever confronts them and I think that is the true lesson of fairy tales. Because come on, when will it benefit someone to know that when Ursula spins up the shipwrecks you can grab a rope, swing aboard and aim it at her gut? I really think what is harder to overcome are all the girls who think marriage and romance is a Disney fairy tale and want a pretty pretty princess wedding only to be disappointed and swing into a life of self-failure, depression and whatever because they can’t have that “perfect” life that Disney touts about living happily ever after. I have seen more of that in my adult life than scarring from the villains.
On a self-preservation note, I have begun to limit what my daughter watches because she is 2 and she does not necessarily understand what is real and not real yet and I do not want to be up at all hours of the night checking closets and underneath beds and calming her down about things that are fictitious. She does get scared and right now I think her fears are more because she doesn’t understand what is logical and not. Honestly, at times when it’s dark (and boy does it get REALLY dark here in Alaska) I still feel like something is under my bed and will run and jump so it can’t swipe at my ankles. And I don’t flush the toilet at night because the noise will scare me in the dark and you will see shower curtains open or see-thru in my house because I swear someone is always hiding behind them. Oh, and thanks to Candyman I REFUSE to look in a mirror after I shut the lights off in the bathroom. And these aren’t fears I got from my childhood so kids will develop their own fears regardless of any level of protection. And it is true, some kids have to experience things in order to learn. And unfortunately some adults do to…