I definitely like a good written villain. But what’s the point the author is trying to make here? We need a villain in our stories otherwise we can’t scare our kids into submission?
And even IF you believe that you can only teach kids stuff like this by scaring them, there are several other ways to achieve this without a villain. She could get lost, fall down a cliff, get hit by a boulder, whatever gory stuff you can come up with.
We need them to make it easier and more interesting to tell our story but not because they are the only option to tell it…
The objective of Grimm fables is not to make kids feel good, nor to scare them, really. It’s to prepare them for the real world.
Red Riding Hood is not a story about kids being eaten by wolves. It’s a story about teaching kids that there are adults in the world who want to harm them. Adults who will make themselves appear non-threatening in order to lure those kids into harm.
What OOP implies here is that by removing elements of children’s stories that make us uncomfortable is exactly working against the morals and purpose of those stories.
As an autistic child I never understood those dimensions of the story anyway. I am literally realizing them right now in my 40s upon reading your comment. Instead, I learned those life lessons because my parents told them to me directly.
Ah, same. My parents were neurodivergent and very blunt with life lessons, too. Neurotypicals have that kind of “beat around the bush” “don’t say the quiet part out loud” “guide them to water” type of attitude I think.
I definitely like a good written villain. But what’s the point the author is trying to make here? We need a villain in our stories otherwise we can’t scare our kids into submission?
And even IF you believe that you can only teach kids stuff like this by scaring them, there are several other ways to achieve this without a villain. She could get lost, fall down a cliff, get hit by a boulder, whatever gory stuff you can come up with.
We need them to make it easier and more interesting to tell our story but not because they are the only option to tell it…
Unfortunately, you missed the point.
The objective of Grimm fables is not to make kids feel good, nor to scare them, really. It’s to prepare them for the real world.
Red Riding Hood is not a story about kids being eaten by wolves. It’s a story about teaching kids that there are adults in the world who want to harm them. Adults who will make themselves appear non-threatening in order to lure those kids into harm.
What OOP implies here is that by removing elements of children’s stories that make us uncomfortable is exactly working against the morals and purpose of those stories.
As an autistic child I never understood those dimensions of the story anyway. I am literally realizing them right now in my 40s upon reading your comment. Instead, I learned those life lessons because my parents told them to me directly.
Ah, same. My parents were neurodivergent and very blunt with life lessons, too. Neurotypicals have that kind of “beat around the bush” “don’t say the quiet part out loud” “guide them to water” type of attitude I think.
Good thing you weren’t born in that era, too. You would’ve been discarded/drowned/sold/cloistered/etc. as a witch like the rest of us NDs. 😅😶