Why read folk and fairy tales to kids?
Spotlight On: Folk and Fairy Tales: Part 1
Once upon a time (see what I did there?), I wrote an essay about the importance of reading folk and fairy tales to children, and, as I am wont to do, reviewed and recommended a whole bunch of titles.
Over the next two weeks — four posts in total — we’ll be revisiting that work, some of which I’ve revised pretty majorly, so if you read it the first time around, there will likely be something new here to think about.
Today I explain the why behind reading fairy tales to your kiddos (yes, even the scary ones). Enjoy!
Fairy tales help children face their fears
Bruno Bettelheim, an Austrian psychologist, scholar, public intellectual, and author wrote an entire book — the book — on the universal importance of fairy tales. It’s a dense academic read that took me over a year to finish, so I will let Wikipedia do its job on this one and explain the gist of his premise:
“Bettelheim analyzed fairy tales in terms of Freudian psychology in The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales (1976). He discussed the emotional and symbolic importance of fairy tales for children, including traditional tales at one time considered too dark, such as those collected and published by the Brothers Grimm.
Bettelheim suggested that traditional fairy tales, with the darkness of abandonment, death, witches, and injuries, allowed children to grapple with their fears in remote, symbolic terms. If they could read and interpret these fairy tales in their own way, he believed, they would get a greater sense of meaning and purpose. Bettelheim thought that by engaging with these socially evolved stories, children would go through emotional growth that would better prepare them for their own futures.”
On page 155 of The Uses of Enchantment, Bettelheim writes, “The fairy story communicates to the child an intuitive, subconscious understanding of his own nature and of what his future may hold if he develops his positive potentials. He senses from fairy tales that to be a human being in this world of ours means having to accept difficult challenges, but also encountering wondrous adventures.” (emphasis mine)
He goes on to discuss the inclination in modern times to reject fairy tales because we apply literary standards to them that are inappropriate — i.e., we take these stories as real, and worse, we look at them through our present-day lens, which creates a lot of problems because of course, the cruelty and sadism we find is totally outrageous.
But, Bettleheim argues, this isn’t the way fairy tales are intended — instead, we should approach these stories, which are full of eternal human problems no matter your era or location, as symbols of psychological happenings.
That is: sometimes we all feel like we’re lost in a dark forest with no way out.
The situations in our lives — and our feelings about them — are not simple.
Fairy tales are often dark, violent, and grossly exaggerated. Possibly you’re thinking, “I don’t want to read this to my kids!” I get it. I almost gave away Paul Galdone’s excellent version of The Three Little Pigs when my first child was a toddler because I didn’t want to expose her to the blunt violence of the traditional ending (the wolf in a pot of boiling water, the end).
But after reading Bettelheim and others who present fairy tales as important tools of and for emotional development, I revised my opinion.
Children don’t need dumbed-down or sanitized versions of these tales — they need to be able to confront their fears and their own inner darkness in the safety of a story.
Because this is the world, is it not? Darkness exists, both outside and inside us.
Fairy tales speak to the human condition, to truth, to justice, to the light as well as the dark, and — this is the most important part — how to come to terms with it all.
Fairy tales are also… complicated
Even the most ancient of these stories full of deep universal truths have picked up social and societal baggage along the way.
The nonprofit organization, SocialJusticeBooks.org, goes further and says it so well:
“Folk and fairy tales have long been a mainstay of children’s literature. In the cultures from which they come, folk and fairy tales were used to teach important lessons and values related to their culture of origin. Children love them in their original versions — not their commercially sanitized adaptations.
However, folk and fairy tales also carry messages that convey sexism, classism, and racism and must be used thoughtfully as part of introducing young children to diversity and anti-bias values of quality and fairness.”
Does this mean we shouldn’t read folk and fairy tales? Of course not. But it does mean, like anything else we share with children, we must look at those stories through a critical lens and plan our approach.
If there is problematic content — and there absolutely will be — how will you handle it, and what will you do to balance it? (This is worth thinking through ahead of time.)
And while I do believe folk and fairy tales are for every child, everywhere, use your common sense: I don’t advocate reading things that are gratuitously violent, horrible, or gory (so there are some fairy tales I won’t share); I don’t read stories to my own kiddos if they are too scary. There are some things that I would never have read to my 3yo that I am okay with reading to my 9yo.
All of this is subjective and ever-changing — you know your child better than anyone else, and you know their (and your) comfort level with different subjects and content. Fairy tales, though important, are not in a special category of their own when it comes to making choices about what to read — you retain that right, always.
Folk and fairy tales: what’s the difference?
No one has ever been able to agree definitively on what the differences are (the debate has been raging for as long as there has been a debate to be had) but generally:
Folktales are an oral tradition with no author; scenarios happen in real life and not the world of magic or fantasy; characters are often (though not always) animals with human characteristics and/or the ability to talk; they were written for common folk with the intention of wide appeal.
Fairy tales are a written tradition with an author (though sometimes the author/s took their stories from the oral tradition); situations, events, aspects of the story are magical and/or supernatural; characters can be (though are not always) mythical or otherworldly; many (though not all) were originally written for the European aristocracy.
Of course, both types of stories often share some if not many similarities across cultures, because again, these are human stories with wide human appeal. (Take Cinderella, one of the oldest and most widely told tales in the world, with thousands and thousands of variations found in all different cultures.)
And: we are redefining what these stories can look like all the time. Which, I think, is what people have been doing with them for hundreds, maybe even thousands of years already — taking them and making them reflective of their own time and place.
I have 15 folk and fairy tale recommendations for you over the next two weeks — on Thursday, the first five.
(And, I’m not the only one with fairy tales on my mind: Read Aloud Revival is offering an upcoming free workshop called 3 Simple Steps to a Fairy Tale Summer. I don’t know Sarah Mackenzie — at least not outside of her work — and this isn’t a sponsored mention or anything, just a resource that looks valuable, so I’m passing it on.)
Sarah
“Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten.”
― Neil Gaiman, Coraline
I just started reading "my father's dragon" to my 3yo as our first chapter book and I did worry the stressful adventure elements would make her nervous. She loves the book and we've read it a few times already two weeks in. This topic could not be more timely!