Is Halloween too spooky for children? One Penn State psychologist thinks so.
"It is the adults who should be afraid this Halloween. Not of ghouls and goblins, but of permanently scarring their children.
"In a recent study of six- and seven-year-olds in the Philadelphia area, Penn State psychologist Cindy Dell Clark found that most parents underestimate just how terrifying the holiday can be for young kids.
[…]
"According to Clark, who interviewed parents and children after three Halloweens, younger children may be unwilling participants in the whole ritual.
"The key ingredient in the recipe of Halloween fright is, of course, death.
"’Intriguingly, Halloween is a holiday when adults assist children in behaviors taboo and out of bounds,’ Clark writes in the anthropological journal Ethos. ‘It is striking that on Halloween, death-related themes are intended as entertainment for the very children whom adults routinely protect.’"
After reading through this story, I wondered why the results of so many scientific studies seem to point to the solution of simply using common sense. Basically, it boils down to parents making sure their children learn the difference between reality and make-believe, and that they be on guard against well-intentioned people who expose children to more Halloween fright than the kids can handle. Then again, these days common sense is all too often an uncommon commodity.
REINVENTING THE HALLOWEEN LIGHT.
Happy Halloween! (Or, have a happy All Hallows Even, if you prefer.)
JIMMY ADDS: My own theory on the spookiness of Halloween celebrations is that it’s part of the same psychological process that leads humans to watch drama (which always involves dramatic tension–if the drama is any good) and to "play fight" as children. It’s a way of exposing oneself to dangers in a simulated, safe manner and thus learning to cope wiht the emotion of fear that accompanies them so that you’ll be able to handle it when you face REAL dangers. Such simulated danger situations are part of life–and of growing up. That’s not to say that some kids may not find the whole experience too scary. I know that when I was a small boy I was quite scared of some Halloween stuff, though that didn’t stop me from wanting to stay up late every Friday night to watch monster movies on Boo Theater.
Happy Halloween!
I remember when I was a kid I absolutely refused to go into a haunted house, even with a real police officer offering to accompany me and my family.
Having now seen what is inside a “haunted” house, I feel like a dork.
My family and I put on a haunted house over the weekend. It was really scary to some of the kids in our family. We had some really “good” spooks: Leather-face w/chain-saw (minus the chain of course), Freddy Kruger, The Exorcist kid, Jason (Friday 13th), and a Werewolf. I told many of the kids before-hand that this is all make-believe and that if you don’t think that you can handle it, don’t go inside. I agree with Michelle, use your common sense.
We just came back from a Halloween costume gathering.
All this week, my 3-year old daughter had been trying on the evil queen/witch costume that she will be wearing for a neighborhood gathering, complete with
5-inch long fingernails.
Five minutes after we arrived at outside gathering, she spots a teenager wearing a fullface gargoyle mask coming toward her. Couple that with the extreme darkness (No moonlight. Anyone ten feet away becomes a mere shadow), and the distant rumblings of thunder, and the result:
The most primal scream I’ve heard from my daughter. Her face turned red from fright and we had to find our our way back home and back to the light.
There’s no way I could have anticipated such fright in her (others her age didn’t care).
Unfortunately, some kids have parents or other relatives who think it funny to scare the bejeebers out of the little ones.
Too bad common sense can’t be sold in bottles.
I live in a place (Arkansas) that many think of as backward, and in some ways they are right. In fact, we are so backward that this is still mostly a safe place for kids to walk the streets and go trick-or-treat on Halloween night.
Being backward has it’s advantages.
In our house, we go to Mass, carve pumpkins and trick-or-treat around the neighborhood.
This year, we also baked and decorated Halloween cookies. My 10-year-old daughter is an artist and after she grew bored with making ghosts and bats, she made a couple of Hobbits.
I made an Eye of Sauron cookie and she went around scaring everyone with it. She would slowly move it around from behind the “victim” into their line of vision and say in her best evil, gravelly voice, “I SEE YOU…”.
She also does an uncomfortably dead-on impression of Gollum.
We L-O-V-E Halloween!
After reading through this story, I wondered why the results of so many scientific studies seem to point to the solution of simply using common sense.
Don’t worry Michelle, you’re not the only person who’s noticed these trends. Pretty much anybody not enamored with psychologists sees this.
Yet our society allows them to be our moral parents.
I knew of a guy who was going through some hard times with his family life and was on the hairy edge of committing adultery. The person he was seeing to help him with his marriage (don’t know if it was a counselor or psychologist or what..) told him to go ahead and commit the adultery. You know, go with your feelings and all that. Luckily he recognized that that wasn’t the right answer…but still…
After reading through this story, I wondered why the results of so many scientific studies seem to point to the solution of simply using common sense. Basically, it boils down to parents making sure their children learn the difference between reality and make-believe
Would common sense then involve participation in a holiday where slasher flicks are frequently watched (so says my marketing collateral) and drinking goes way up (notice the change in displays at your grocery?). There is a difference between the Brothers Grimm with all its blood and gore which is told and explained by a parent and bumping into a Jason or a Freddy on the street and at every store you go to.
I had to listen to a rather sad story last week about a mother who took her child shopping. The story ended with the child sobbing because of all the scary things around her. Why would a Christian participate in that? How is that following The Way?
The defence of the whole <*sputter with anger*> holi-day is that its fun for me. To which I answer, are you really that important that your joy comes at the expenseof the weak? We do, after all, theoreticly belong to a religion that is not over fond of jokes at another persons expense (Eph 5:4)
Well, you don’t have to be scary or scare anyone to have fun. My kiddos don’t dress up as anything scary and we are careful about where we go and what we do. We can have fun without the scary stuff. And don’t forget it’s all about the candy!
I run a haunted house during October. You would be surprised at how many parents insist their children under age 10 are quite capable going thru a completely blacked-out house with terrifying music and screams, with fiendish creatures jumping out at them and be fine. If they insist [and some of them do] I start the tour, but at the first sign of terror[about after the first 10 feet], I have the actors take off their masks and intro themselves, and conduct the rest of tour with a bright flashlight, and demonstrate all the props.
Everybody thinks their child is exceptional and refuses to acknowledge basic developmental stages in kids. If they are under 10, seriously consider NOT paying to have your kid terrified in to nightmares.
Common sense is not as common as you would like to believe.
The key ingredient in the recipe of Halloween fright is, of course, death…. ‘It is striking that on Halloween, death-related themes are intended as entertainment for the very children whom adults routinely protect.’…. Halloween also provides an opportunity for adults to confront usually uncomfortable topics like death
“Memento mori” is the whole point of most of the traditions that have gone into the making of American Halloween. It would be downright morbid to ignore death and not to have such a holiday.
Catholics United for the Faith’s “All Hallows Eve” Faith Fact is a great source for historical info.