Fringe Benefits of the Dark Side

Sharma Shields writes about her diagnosis of multiple sclerosis in the NYT and how she manages bedtime reading with her children.

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/...

At night, I read fairy tales to the kids — “Hansel and Gretel,” “Snow-White and Rose-Red” — stories in which unsentimental children are abandoned in a brutal world, left to fend for themselves. My son briefly develops a fear of wolves; my daughter becomes terrified of skeletons. I want to tell them: People are scarier than wolves; we all have a skeleton inside of us. But I know better than to say such things, and maybe they need to feel what they feel and fear what they fear. I hold them close and kiss their heads and tell them I’ll always keep them safe.

 Readers’ comments seem evenly divided between those expressing shock and horror at the idea of reading Grimm to young children and those validating the choice.  Over the years, I’ve had many conversations with students about their encounters with scary stories, and most of them (granted, it’s a self-selecting group of voracious readers) emphasized their eagerness to explore the dark side.  I’ve always believed that children, even at a very young age, know their limits, and if a story is too frightening and overwhelms them in some way, they will either fall asleep or walk away.  If you read to your child on a regular basis, it’s easy to navigate this terrain with conversations about each story that help you instinctively calibrate what is appropriate for bedtime reading.  Reading fairy tales may expose children to the dark side, but it also introduces them to survival skills, teaching them to use their heads to outsmart predators.  Shoving the witch into the oven may be a bridge too far, but no reason to be reverent about the words on the page, especially for the younger crowd.