Nina In New York: Parents Who Say Fairy Tales Too Scary Need To Get A Grip
A young professional's take on the trials and tribulations of everyday life in New York City.
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By Nina Pajak
I read a very disturbing headline this week, and it had nothing to do with Rick Santorum or Twitter fake killing Chris Brown. It was in the Telegraph, and it read:
Fairy tales too scary for modern children, say parents
Seriously.
Seriously?
A UK poll conducted in conjunction with the British release of American television show Grimm reported that a quarter of 2,000 parents questioned wouldn't even dream of reading a classic fairy tale to a child under the age of five to avoid "awkward questions."
A third of parents polled stay away from The Gingerbread Man, due to the cookie's ultimate demise via a hungry fox at the end, and more than half steer clear of Cinderella for portraying a woman devoting her days to housework. Many have crossed Jack and the Beanstalk off the list for being—get this—"too unrealistic." And apparently, Goldilocks and the Three Bears is ixnayed, because it condones stealing.
I find this so depressing.
Let me pause to tell you a famous childhood story which has become one of the few that gets retold and retold through my adulthood. When I was a toddler, my mean, terrible parents didn't think to shelter me from evil, scary fairy tales. So after hearing the plight of Goldilocks many times over, I came up with my own version which I liked to recite:
"Once upon a time, three bears. Goldilocks woke up. The end."
Frankly, I think it's a pretty brilliant synopsis and quite precocious in its terseness. I captured the broad strokes, the most salient plot points. More importantly, while I certainly got the jist of the story, I obviously never paid enough attention to glean a moral lesson such as, "if you're hungry, you may steal someone else's porridge and then take a nap in a stranger's home," or "don't be afraid of bears, they're just like us." I'm pretty sure those bases were covered at various other points during my upbringing, and my parents didn't have to worry about reading us Hansel and Gretel one night and
I don't have children yet, so I suppose I can't say this with absolute and total certainty. But I would really like to think that as a parent, I will not raise my children to be such total wimps that they can't handle Snow White. Sure, it's scary! And sure, when I went on the Snow White ride at Disneyworld as a kid, I bawled uncontrollably and had to spend the rest of the day riding "It's a Small World After All" in an endless, mind-numbing loop just to regain a sense of safety and security in the world. But if the hardest way my parents toughened me up a little bit was subjecting me to a make-believe story about a witch and a prince and a happily ever after, I don't think they did too poorly. What ever happened to building character?
And if seeing an obnoxious, gloating man made out of gingerbread get outwitted and eaten by a fox is too much for a little kid to handle at five, how in the world will she be ready to watch Rosemary's Baby at ten?
Kids these days have no fortitude at all.
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Dear Readers: While I am rarely at a loss for words, I'm always grateful for column ideas. Please feel free to e-mail me your suggestions.
Nina Pajak is a writer and publishing professional living with her husband on the Upper West Side.
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