SCARE THE KIDS? WHY NOT?
I am the mother of five children. They range in age from twenty-five down to seven.
When my twenty-two year old son came home to visit recently, he made the observation that I don’t frighten my little ones enough.
I was horrified. “What?” I stammered. “What on earth do you mean?”
He went on to tell me that his memories of childhood were strung together with nightmares and phobias constructed by me. I argued that he must have been mistaken but no, he categorically listed them for me.
- If you don’t go to sleep, sandman will tip sand into your eyes.
- If you put your hand out the car window, a truck will go by and rip it off.
- Walk down the road in the opposite direction to the traffic so baddies don’t swoop you up as they drive past.
- Don’t swallow chewing gum or you’ll die.
- Don’t pick your nose or your head will cave in.
- If you swear the police will arrest you. (I’d be serving three consecutive life sentences if this was true!)
He even reminded me of how terrified his little brother Harry was of those dress-up characters in shopping centres. There was a man in a chicken suit at Franklins one day and little Harry was beside himself with fear.
From that day on, whenever Harry was naughty or disobedient he was told that the Chicken-Man would get him. I question this story and think that perhaps the older boys were more guilty of that one that me.
I also question the allegation that I once sat the older boys down to watch Mommie Dearest to show them what a really scary mother looked like, so that they would appreciate me more. Did I really do that?
But the truth is parents are Santa Claus and the Bogeyman at the same time. Is that such a bad thing?
These days we are probably more politically correct and don’t scream at the kids bouncing and shouting in the back seat, ‘If you don’t stop that I’ll drive straight to Freddie Kruger’s place and drop you off!’ but we all do indulge in a little control therapy from time to time by falling back on the oldest and strongest emotion – fear.
It’s not completely our fault. Society has taught us that fear is a mighty tool in the arsenal of ‘control’. Just look at North Korea. Hell is the capital city of Fear.
These days we like to think of ourselves as more mindful with our child-rearing but even our everyday language is laden with fear messages. Of course, today we live in a scarier world….or do we?
Are there really more people being snatched off the side of the road? How many little hands have actually been ripped off by passing trucks? What are the hospital statistics on chewing- gum-gut syndrome?
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17 Responses to this article
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leda September 28, 2012
So long as they are purposeful fears….ie..sticking things in sockets and driving with a drunk person, then yes I think a little healthy fear is a good thing.. Love the Chicken-Man by the way!!
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Syb September 28, 2012
Of course, as we learned this week, there really are bogeymen out there and people do get snatched off the road. Of course a little fear therapy is fine but it is important to teach kids how to deal with fearful situations and strategies should fears actually eventuate. Don’t tell them that there are no monsters….there are….tell them how to avoid them and how to react if they come across one. Fear is a healthy protetion to have. Nice artile. Thanks.
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Ruby September 28, 2012
I used to tell my son that I had ‘eyes in the back of my head’ never thinking he would believe me. Years later (he is 21 now) he told me that he was terrified of those eyes and couldn’t look at the back of my head in case they popped out! Needless to say they weren’t enough of deterrent to misbehavior.
(PS my 4 children range from 30 to 9 and I dont really try to frighten them anymore. They’ve heard it all before. A good bribe still goes a long way though!) -
Wendy68 September 28, 2012
It is about respecting your past experiences with language, not just where it overlaps with fear. I bite my tongue from using two words; “secret” and “accident”. The former is something I don’t want to encourage for many reasons, not only because it is the refuge of the predatorial. The latter is used vary sparingly, and only with predictive future context. Why? I’ve seen how “it was just an accident” doesn’t encourage children to take responsibility for their actions and as it extends from babyhood without review, can create teenagers and adults who think that just saying “it was an accident” absolves them of any responsibility, accountability or even the need to clean up their own mess. Sure, accidents do happen, but we can all decide “what will I do when I see that situation start to happen again” and “what will I do if it does”. It’s never to early to start; the earlier you do the more the behaviour becomes ingrained and you don’t have to battle an imbued sense of ‘entitlement’. You don’t have to manage with fear – manage with giving kids a sense of self responsibility. Sure it can seem like a bit more work at first but it pays off fast, and only gets better whereas fear needs constant reminding – who wants fear to be a natural state. They can still be afraid of consequences – mine will absolutely be motivated to tidy up a floor full of toys when he is reminded that if he doesn’t, they go in a bag to either be stored or given away to other children!
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Wendy68 September 28, 2012
ps. a friends mum had her had out the window, resting on the top of the car, driving in the 70′s. Car rolled, terrible damage to her hand. I met her a few years after I started driving and never did it again.
pps a friend of my g-mas also lost the sight in one of her eyes from a tea towel flick. maybe an urban myth but that was enough for me! -
Chris September 28, 2012
Hey Nicci, Don’t we have to be REALLY careful about what we say to our kids? Words are extremely powerful because we are God to kids. “Get out of those wet clothes or you’ll catch a terrible cold, be sick for a week, and have to take discusting medicine, that’ll make you want to throw up.” I’ve had to retrain myself NOT to do that. I could just as easily say, “Put on some dry clothes and you’ll be the healthiest kid in the universe”. And leave them with THAT thought. Any thought that goes in will have an effect. Law of Attraction. But then we have a responsibility as well to communicate intelligently and matter-a-factly the hard facts about the biggies – eg child sexual assault – 1 in 3 have experienced it! (Does that mean there’s one in three out there doing it?) Now there’s a dialogue I’ve been working on to have with my granddaughters. “Did you know if someone touches you or makes you touch them, the police have to come and they will go to gaol for a long time!!” Mmmmm. will keep working on it, but you get the picture.
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Nikki McWatters September 28, 2012
In a perfect world Chris, we’d all be perfect parents. The point of my article was to acknowledge that we aren’t. But even the things we get wrong don’t always backfire or have dire consequences. If I beat myself up over every inappropriate thing I said to my five kids I’d be a pulverized mess. I like to think I got it right more often than wrong and that the wrong didn’t traumatize them too much!
It is ideal to do as you suggest and cloak warnings in positive dialogue i.e the dry clothes = health and warmth….but, and especially in emergency situations, kids respond more to a fright than a sensible and rational explanation. I tried to keep the piece light but in the case of sexual assault it is far more important to have those early discussions which cover how to avert, react and deal with such situations without instilling a generic fear of every stranger or worse, every ‘man’. It’s such a constant battle to get parenting right but I am fairly certain my family’s ‘chicken-man’ has done no lasting harm. Thanks for your feedback……..x
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Rhoda September 28, 2012
Fairy tales are a great source of knowlege for kids. All those handed down myths and legends and dreams exaggerated allows them freedom to imagine. Exaggeration comes naturally to children – to all of us really.
If you want your children to be intelligent then read them fairy tales said Albert Einstein – reportedly.
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The Huntress September 28, 2012
We can’t use such fears in our home for any purpose at all as my son has 2 diagnosed mental illnesses that combined make him freak out. He doesn’t openly freak out, but he becomes hyper-vigilant, doesn’t sleep (literally stays awake all night to protect the family and falls asleep in school the next day) and gets very distressed when anyone leaves the house without him. He also starts waiting on the time and when it gets close to when daddy ought to be coming home he starts crying and saying he needs to call him and make sure he’s safe.
Anything we teach to our son has to have its basis in reality so he can accept it as it is, make rational sense of it and not fly into hypervigilance. It’s much easier to show him what happens to people who take ‘bad drugs’, he can understand as a risk that if he doesn’t look both ways before crossing the road he might get hit by a car and he knows why it’s so important for everyone in the family to let someone know where they are at all times.
So I suppose you could say we use “healthy fear”, but I prefer that fear to be grounded in reality. Fairy tales are wonderful moral stories, but belong as stories, not real entities.
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sue bell September 28, 2012
The telling of fairy tales to your children is one of the most important things you can do to help them develop psychologically.
In fairy tales the characters rarely have names, their titles reflect their role in the story. The protagonist/hero is usually the youngest child (representing your child) they have to set out on a quest and try and try again until they themselves solve the problem. This teaches them that we have to try things over and over, that success is not instantaneous. The child must solve the problem, this empowers your child to know that hard work and setbacks can be overcome. Other characters roles are deeply imbedded in our psychological make up. The hunter protects the child, the king/queen/parent sets the quest in motion, the good helpers such as small creatures /faery folk teach your child kindness to others and compassion.
When a fairy tale is read at night as part of bedtime routine the child has a chance to dream and to take the message of the fairy tale to help solve his/her psychological needs. Children will come back again and again to fairy tales right throughout their lives, each time gaining the psychological understanding that they need at that particular time. Disney stories are not fairy tales, they do not answer the questions or serve a psychological need. The dark stories gathered by the brothers Grimm are repeated in every society around the world, they are our most important tool and are recognised as such in every society. They are our primal stories for our primal fears . -
Nikki McWatters September 28, 2012
I do very much like all the comments sharing the power of fairy- tales. Grimm’s were particularly scary. Most fairy-tales contain quite horrific subject matter….abductions, attempted murder i.e. Hansel and Gretel – probably where the fear of taking sweets from strangers comes from.
This just supports my idea that a little healthy fear that taps into our primal psyche has its place. I am horrified to find kids these days who don’t know the stories of Snow-White, Sleeping Beauty, Hansel and Gretel etc because they are too frightening. The world can be a frightening place. Kids need to know that so they are prepared.
We are not born with a natural fear of other people. We learn that. Fairy-tales are a way of helping establish between those who mean us harm and those who don’t.
I am sorry to hear of The Huntress’s son’s reactions to fear. I have a son who suffers from night terrors and understand that is a different situation altogether . All my children are different. Just because I employed the Chicken Man for one doesn’t mean it would work for everyone. My children are phobia free despite my silly threats….(except one who is pathologically afraid of sweet chili sauce…I’m not sure what I did wrong there!)
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The Huntress September 28, 2012
Hahaha ‘pathologically afraid of sweet chilli sauce’…
Nikki, I agree that all families will do what is right for them. Be it Chicken Man, the Bogey Man, God or the Wrath of the Angry Mum everyone works out their own way of doing things. And we all do the best we can with the tools we are given.
I’m almost a bit sad I can’t use Chicken-Man. It would be much more fun…
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neeter October 1, 2012
there’s a great song out there by the Indigo Girls called “Chicken Man” you could use that for future situations!
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Nikki McWatters October 2, 2012
I’ll look out for that….maybe a good wake up song for Monday mornings!!!
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Kath October 2, 2012
Yes, it’s all fun and games until somebody loses an eye!
A little fear is a good thing, I say. Just as long as it’s not religious based fear, I’m fine with it. That’s a whole other story …
