COMMENT: Scare the bejeezus out of your kids this Halloween! It’s for their own good…
By Adrian Barnes
We all have our pet peeves and Lord knows I’m no exception to that rule. I grow bitter over misapplied apostrophes and furious at the sight of people ‘walking’ their dogs by having the poor animals chase the family car up and down the Old Cascade Highway. Some of my pettish peeves are seasonal in nature. I’m no fan of a Santa Claus, for example, when the old coot spoils rich kids and ignores poor ones. But one of my all time greatest seasonal grumps has to do with the cutesification of Halloween.
Walking around town this week I’ve seen cherub-cheeked plastic ghosts and amicably-grinning skeletons planted on lawns. Groan-worthy (the wrong kind of groaning) puns on signs like ‘rest in pieces’. Kids dressed as Disney characters and friendly animals. All of this pulls forth from me the (wrong kind of) aargh.
Halloween is supposed to be scary.
Kids love to be scared. In our family’s Halloween narrative the year my younger son ran screaming from a house on Thompson Avenue looms large. It’s a charming little tale of terror and physical calamity that never fails to bring tears of laughter to our eyes. The owner of the house in question dressed up as a ghoul and sat, still as a statue as kids walked up his driveway. Then, as they passed him, he’d leap up and yell ‘boo’.
When this happened to my poor son, who was about six at the time, he turned tail and began to sprint down the street as fast as his little, ghost-gowned legs would carry him. When he was about three doors down from the house of horror, however, he tripped over the hem of his garment and did a painful faceplant on the asphalt. Ah, precious memories. Needless to say, within five minutes of these terrible events, he was proud and excited about his adventure. Indeed, ten years later, we still talk about it when the leaves turn gold and the darkness arrives earlier
And that’s the point. Being scared is good for kids. It teaches them to respect the unknown and to be cautious around it. In fairy tales, children venture off into the woods, beyond parental control, and then use their ingenuity to rescue themselves from the horrors that lurk out in the darkness.
If a child doesn’t learn about the world’s dangers in these fairly easy (and fun) ways, how will they learn? Teaching kids that ghosts and ghouls are cute little things isn’t much fun and it doesn’t do them any favours. Being scared in a manageable way teaches kids caution and bravery, two attributes that they’ll surely need as they grow up and head out into a world that really IS scary at times.
So as you’re getting ready for tonights’ revels, give some thought to doing at least a little something to upset your precious offspring. One day they’ll thank you for it.
Adrian Barnes is the editor of the Rossland Telegraph and president of Lone Sheep Publishing.
