by Emory Luce Baldwin "Why did I like being frightened? What instinctive need is satisfied by terror? Why, indeed, do children like stories about bears, wolves and witches? Is it because something rebels in one against the life that is too safe? Is a certain amount of danger in life a need of human beings?...Do you instinctively need something to combat, to overcome -- to, as it were, prove yourself? Take away the wolf from the story of Red Riding Hood and would any child enjoy it? However, like most things in life, you want to be frightened a little -- but not too much!"
-- Agatha Christie
I have lots of great memories of my children dressing up for Halloween trick-or-treating when they were younger. For the first few years, my son always dressed up as some kind of space man hero and my daughter was usually a fairy princess in pink. When they were very young, my kids would sometimes be frightened by the sight of bigger kids trick-or-treating while wearing the more ghoulish costumes. Then, only a few years later, and my son was proudly going trick-or-treating as "a science experiment gone horribly wrong" while his younger sister dressed herself up as "a murdered bride" carrying a bouquet of dead flowers.
What happened?!
Continue reading The Heart of Parenting: Braving a scary world.
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