We’ve all had stories that enthralled us while growing up, and no matter how many times we’ve heard our grandparents narrate them, it always feels new every single time. Has it ever struck you that all of us are under the influence of the act of storytelling?
Children are the best storytellers and narrators. They mostly only have the cartoons they watch to talk to us about, which lapses into proactive conversations. They grow up to become individuals who actively voice out their likes and dislikes.
Stories move children, and it gets them feeling creative and
Why Fairytales can Affect your child’s maturity for good:
- Love comes in all shapes and sizes, so does the good and evil in Fairy Tales and cartoons. Children pick up meanings from little things and it does make them question why things are a certain way and this shall, in turn, incorporate learning.
Example – Questioning why sleeping beauty was fed the apple and how did it add up to the story, and how things could have been different. The characteristics of how sleeping beauty was courageous and assertive.
- The idea of family, relationships, values, and principles are present in abundance in Fairy Tales – such as Cinderella, The Little Mermaid and Sleeping Beauty. The idea here is to educate the children about these above-mentioned aspects with age and time. It can foster a deeper understanding of relationships among children, in general.
- Guiding the children to locate behaviour patterns, reactions, and safety measures do not have any particular age or time. In the movie’ The Little Mermaid’, explaining/questioning who Ursula is to your child and what to expect from her and how Ariel should be protecting herself from Ursula should be the kind of learning we as parents should help our children understand.
Ex: Safety measures can be something like Ariel standing up for herself and offering a polite warning to Ursula, or even going to her father and explaining the situation and taking feedback.
- Allotting the right kind of fairy tales for your children by being gender neutral is also vital here, as their sexuality is something that they should be choosing at all costs.
Ex: Consider Grimms’ fairy tales with stories like Rapunzel, The Frog King or Fetchers Fowl.
It is high time we understand the natural aspect of it and respect them for who they are, and make them feel comfortable over what they wish to be.
Why Fairytales can hinder your child’s maturity:
- Fairy Tales surely have some red flags in them. They are heavily stereotyped and feature conventional thinking patterns that can affect your child’s cognition. They mostly occur in the form of images and tend to try to copy them and act out similarly in an unfamiliar crowd.
- Bullying can be taken as a good example here. In the movie Cinderella, Ella’s stepsisters put her through trauma and routines, and she feels unsafe here. The child shall gather the negative view here, and not that of how Ella becomes assertive and handle the situation head-on.
- The Damsel in Distress Debate is overdone in most fairy tales. They always portray a Prince who saves the Princess who always gets in trouble and is more or less coy and cannot protect herself. It is important to remember that learning has no age and talking about self-love is important. Being self-respectful and brave are more or less the qualities that children look for in their parents.
- We must present that to them, by emphasising how Cinderella, Princess Aurora, Anna and Elsa, or even Ariel, can be bold and courageous and still do what they wish to do. We need to narrate stories to children as a parent where decisions bold enough are taken by the characters themselves for their interests.
- Fairy Tales that depict violence are should come with red flags. It becomes important to tell the children that it is important to respect others, while at the same time not put up with behaviour that makes them feel threatened and hostile.
- The Little Red Riding Hood, felt threatened by the wolf inside the house and the environment did not feel safe and she made the kind of choice that she made, by being smart and not getting fooled inside the trap the wolf created.
Dreams and aspirations are present in abundance with children, and guardians or parents should ensure that they are a vehicle towards the goals our children make. It is essential to make realistic goals and identify the key features.
Ex: If your child enjoys dramatics and theatre and wants to learn about it, presenting them with resources is what the idea of ‘be a vehicle’ means. You shall then see the output after the child amalgamates it.