Not So Happily Ever After

The recent headline “Fairytales too scary for modern children, say parents” from the Telegraph caught my eye because in our house, it’s the scary stuff that seems to make fairytales so attractive.

The story reports the findings of a survey of 2,000 adults commissioned to coincide with the start of the NBC Show “Grimm,” a drama inspired by classic fairytales. Among those surveyed, one out of five parents forgoes old favorites like Snow White and Rapunzel in favor of something contemporary, according to the story. A third of the moms and dads surveyed said that their children were left in tears by good old Little Red Riding Hood.

But our 4-year-old daughter loves that story, complete with its creepy people-eating Big Bad Wolf. I’d say it’s one of Lucy’s favorites. It’s the one my husband has been asked to read over and over again at bedtime from her big book of fairy tales.

I have to say that Lucy seems most attracted to the scarier stories in the book, like the tale of Hansel and Gretel, who are abandoned in the woods by their stepmother who is worried their isn’t enough food to go around. Then there’s Goldilocks and the Three Bears – in the version in our book, Goldilocks just kind of disappears at the end. In Snow White, our heroine’s life is in jeopardy the whole time, and she spends a good chunk of the story in some kind of apple-induced coma. So yes, to say that the tales are a little disconcerting is an understatement.

And yet, the frightful stories don’t really upset Lucy too much. Mostly they prompt her to ask plenty of questions that bait us to reassure her that all will end well. We think maybe reading them helps her work through her fears at a distance. We read the same stories when we were kids and they didn’t mess us up – in fact, it kind of helped to teach us about the order of the world. The old time fairy tales introduce children to scary things, but at arms’ length, in a format that we parents can control if and when it gets too scary by simply closing the book.

Parents, what do you think? Are the old fairy tales too scary for you to share them with your children?