Christmas time is the most charming period of the year, which makes the human heart to beat faster in anticipation of a miracle. No matter how many old we are and it does not matter how obstinately we argue the fact of a miracle in real life, in these days we all become like children who are light, gullible and open for intangible sensual information. In these days, our subconscious speaks to us as loud as never before revealing all our true beliefs, hopes, and expectations that are rooted in our childhood experience. It is, maybe, a single moment during the year when we are able to speak with our children in the same language – the language of a fairy tale.
Because of this, it is the high time to ask ourselves why being grown up in the good traditions of fairy telling and Christmas miraculous atmosphere related to Santa Claus' visit we strive to deprive our children the magic of being a child using the 'real' (I would rather call it "landed") parenting style. This question arises in my head each year when I face the numerous posts devoted to the sophisticated methods of escaping Santa. I could not overcome my growing surprise concerning the reasons for modern challenging this mysterious creature efficiently playing the educational and motivational role for the centuries.
Unfortunately, Santa is not a single character the modern parents try to expel from children's head and life. Many fairy tales are considered cruel and unreal and thus they gradually become dropped on the backyard of memory. I, as a traditional mother who continues reading the fairy tales to my five years old daughter and maintains her belief in Santa, could not help stop questioning myself whether I do the right thing and maybe the others know something I cannot grasp. The mothers knew that the best way to find the answer was in observing the child's reaction and tried to act in such a way. Here are some of my conclusions.
Cruelty
The parents have substantial life experience and perceive the act of killing, which includes eating, poisoning, breaking into pieces and freezing, as the highest point of cruelty harming immature conscious of their children. Indeed, the young listeners of fairy tales these manifestations of barbarity otherwise. They could not ascribe to them the same semantic load as adults and treat these things as punishment, the price for negligence or just evil deed or indecent behavior etc. Here is my first thought: cruelty does not harm our children but serves for distinguishing the good and evil matters.
I foresee your suggestion that there are multiple ways to avoid cruel scenes and use more subtle educational tool since I ask myself the same question. I even tried to be creative and replace the most unpleasant moments with loyal one. I should say I was surprised by the effect. My daughter found complicated establishing cause-effect links even after my explanation. Thus, I made one more reasoning: cruelty is a symbolical exaggeration extremely needed for making sense in child's conscious since children are not familiar with all shadows of evilness or kindness; the notion of "less evil" does not exist for them, they are maximalists and we should speak to them on their language.
Before you sue me, I should say that I do not mean the adult essence of cruelty and do not promote demonstrating to our children it in all the real aspects. I just want to say that we should not evaluate the killing evil witch as the unacceptable cruelty in the fairy tale. We should remember that it is just symbolical act of celebrating the victory of good underlying the urgent need for saving magic under which the kindness is coded.
Speaking about symbolical and metaphorical meaning, I want to ask how many times you say to your children or in their presence to somebody "you are killing me with your behavior (words, deed,..)"? Do you consider this phrase cruel or just symbolical? Our children should know all the meaning and be able to understand the semantic load intuitively and fairy tale is the first step to decoding.
Unreality
Many parents claim that fairy tale as well as their characters are unreal and appealing to them may cause children's distortion of true perception of life matters or "separation from reality". I do not agree with this. The fact I dreamed to be a good elfin did not mean I still considered me the fairy creation in my thirty-five. Here the adaptation and explanation matters. Thus, when my daughter plays in elfin and imagines she has a mysterious wand I ask her to help me in my household affairs (for example baking the cake). I convince Marry that the wave of her charming wand will make it tastier since it is the miracle of family's love.
We also believe in Santa but alongside mere believing, we have the Christmas costume of Santa wearing which we give the Christmas gifts to our grandparents. I believe that until the moment Marry will challenge this mysterious belief in Santa she will be ready to grasp that this creature is just a spirit of Christmas or kindness living in the heart of every human who makes miracles for the closest people.
So, the fairy tales are the reflection of true life but a little adapted to the initial understanding by our children who are not ready to see all the aspects as they really are. It is the way to found the intuitive aspiring to be a good and kind person. If you dig deep in your heart (as I do) you, most likely, will agree that our believing in the happy end is the primary thing which saves us in the moment of greatest grief and apprises our life with the highest sense even when we are not able to see it.
Source of basic information or enhancement
Claim that the old fairy tales are the source of prejudices that society strives to overcome is one of the latest arguments for challenging the tale telling. I thought a lot about this being partially agree with this statement. However, I have found an interesting thing – my daughter likes one fairy tales when the other she finds uninteresting, boring, unjust, etc. When I ask her about the reasons, I hear my reasoning in her explanation. This fact led me to the conclusion: Marry likes the tales corresponding with the previously presented values, she is just looking for the ground enhancing her personality!!! So if you have no prejudices in your family your child will not identify it on the fairy tale, and even he/she notice them you will be able to explain any phenomenon decently avoiding fixation of indecent information in the young subconscious.
I thought about the fairy tales so long that I could continue writing about this issue endlessly, but I guess I should stop. Just one more argument from the scientific area. Medicine consider the fairy tale a powerful tool in therapeutic practice allowing influence children's conscious and direct inner forces towards curing needs. Pediatric Oncology and Hematology Ward in Naples, Italy, use fairy telling efficiently for diagnostic and treatment.
Finally, I have chosen for myself the position for tale telling. I believe it is the way to self-investigating and self-enhancing for my daughter and I should not make tremendous efforts to make her childhood as real as possible. Life will do it instead of me.
A single thing I should do it is preserving her believing in a miracle, discovering that miracle in its essence is a human kindness and teaching her to create the magic by herself.
About myself: curious working mother, independent writer for GS Diamonds, who strives investigate all possible the aspect of childhood and parenting style, fix most interesting ideas and considerations, share them with the same inquisitive parents
