Imagine bedtime in a faraway land, where fairy tales don’t exist.
A five-year-old boy – we’ll call him Jack – asks his mother to check under his bed for monsters.
“There’s no such thing as monsters, Jack,” his mother replies. She sits down on the bed to curl up with Jack, assuring him – with all the logic that her adult brain can muster – that he need not fear monsters, because they cannot exist.
But Jack is only half listening to his mother. He keeps one ear cocked for the noises he thinks he hears under his bed. His mother sings him a song and gives him a hug. She tucks him in and wishes him goodnight. But Jack is not convinced.
Meanwhile, in a parallel universe, where fairy tales are alive and well, five-year-old Penny is getting ready to go to sleep. She leaps onto her bed from three feet away, afraid that any creatures that might be lurking under her bed could grab her ankles as she climbs in.
“Are you ready for a story?” her father asks. Penny’s growing anxiety about scary nighttime creatures has not escaped her father’s notice. He walks to the bookshelf, choosing from a selection of stories that feature dragons and ogres. Kid-eating giants and big bad wolves. Evil queens and deceitful witches.
They settle down to read and Penny drifts into a world where monsters exist, but so does the power for good to triumph.
To some parents, reading a frightened child a fairy tale that contains scary – even violent – elements is counterintuitive. But many experts around the globe underscore the positive influence fairy tales have on developing minds.
In his book, The Uses of Enchantment, author and child psychologist Bruno Bettelheim argues that fairy tales – with all their gruesome details and evil characters – are actually helpful. They not only give children the opportunity to understand inner conflict – such as fear of being left alone – but also to act out and resolve conflicts using their imagination.
“They work through so many personal and cultural anxieties, yet they do it in a safe, ‘once upon a time’ way,” says Maria Tatar, a professor at Harvard College who writes about, and teaches classes on, fairy tales. “Fairy tales have a real role in liberating the imagination of children. No matter how violent they are, the protagonist always survives.”
Which child, then, will be sleeping better at night? Jack, or Penny?
