Should we let children read fairy tales?

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According to Durham University anthropologist Dr Jamie Tehrani, folk tales (oral language) such as The Boy Who Stole Ogre’s Treasure (Jack and the bean stalk) was being told back some 5,000 years ago.

Beauty And The Beast and Rumpelstiltskin origins date back to 4,000 years and The Smith And The Devil is believed to go back 6,000 years to the Bronze Age.

It would be a shame to not keep these folk tale continue as the have done for thousands of years.
 
Fairy tales are not true. They are just stories. How are they any different for children than “Frozen?” Let children grow up hearing all kinds of stories. I never met any children that actually believed there are magic beans or that a witch is going to eat them.
 
Fairy tales are what they are. I hardly think that reading fairy tales from the Brothers Grimm is going to damage a child.

I mean, you could read Hemingway to them, but then you’d have toddlers reaching for shotguns trying to end it all (a la Hemingway), and that would get messy.
 
Irishmom2 said:
I never met any children that actually believed there are magic beans or that a witch is going to eat them.
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The heyday of that nonsense was about when I was in high school or so, and WB took the violence out of the Roadrunner cartoons. Apparently, there were outbreaks of children thinking they could drop anvils on one another, push one another off cliffs, and put portable holes on cliff walls . . .
(not to mention unrestricted access to TNT, dynamite, and so forth . . .)

hawk
 
*snort*

I understand that the crews that deal with helicopter rescues at Yosemite and the like code it as “INS”–Interference with Natural Selection . . .
 
See also: bikini mountaineer. Poor choices lead to poor outcomes, including freezing to death with injuries. Wonder what she was thinking about when she realized that the end was coming.

Anyway, with regard to fairy tales: I really think that people put far too much time and effort into worrying about such things.
 
One point to consider is that many Catholics come from various cultures which have tales which predate Christianity or its arrival to their respective regions.
 
I am guessing from your name that you are probably Vietnamese. Is that right? I’m not sure where you live though, i.e. Europe (lots of Vietnamese in Czech Republic for example), USA (again lots of Vietnamese), or in Vietnam or somewhere else. If you’re talking about the old European fairy tales, they have been enjoyed by Christians for hundreds, perhaps thousands, of years. If you’re talking about Vietnamese fairy tales, they’re probably very similar to the European ones anyway: they probably express some moral point that is not incompatible with a Christian interpretation. As somebody already pointed out, you don’t want to end up like some Protestants whose children grow up not allowed to read stories about witches because they think it will lead to things like possession by demons.
 
I had many Bible story books and enjoyed them greatly. That doesn’t mean that I never wanted to read anything other than the Bible or that my parents never read me anything else or bought me a book with stories containing secular characters. There’s plenty of room for variety.

Restricting a kid’s reading to Bible /religious material only is a great way to turn him off to the Bible/ religion entirely.
 
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ralfyman said:
One point to consider is that many Catholics come from various cultures which have tales which predate Christianity or its arrival to their respective regions.
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We’re talking about fairy tales, i.e. make believe. It doesn’t matter how old the tale is or whether it “predates Christianity”. It’s fiction, not a religious instruction tool.
 
Tis_Bearself said:
Restricting a kid’s reading to Bible /religious material only is a great way to turn him off to the Bible/ religion entirely.
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I’ve met more than a few no-longer-practicing Catholics whose parents tried to shove religion down their throats so aggressively as children that faith came to represent the death of everything fun. As soon as they left the house, they ran as far away from the church as humanely possible and the parents are left wondering what happened.
 
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You are blessed that your parents read Bible stories to you. In childhood this gives our faith a good grounding, even if we turn away from God for a time as we get older.

I did not suggest, at any point, restricting children’s reading to Scripture. There is a myriad of written work to draw from.
Learning about the world around us is essential. My next go to would be nature, and technology. Trucks, cars, earthmoving equipment, flora, fauna, life skills works. And cultural works.

Unfortunately companies that produce cartoons of fairytales do so in the spirit of commercialism . It is very difficult for children to escape this influence. A particular tale is turned into a marketing and copyright exercise such that a cake maker puts themselves at risk if using that theme on a 4yo’s birthday cake.
 
There are many biblical stories to choose from. Look at themes in fairytales, a witch boils and eats children. A giant egg falls and is smashed, live birds are baked in a pie. These themes can be quite distressing for youngsters.
 
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BoomBoomMancini said:
I’ve met more than a few no-longer-practicing Catholics whose parents tried to shove religion down their throats so aggressively as children that faith came to represent the death of everything fun. As soon as they left the house, they ran as far away from the church as humanely possible and the parents are left wondering what happened.
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All fundementalist Catholic parents should take this to heart.
 
There are a lot of children’s Bible books to choose from that a parent can just read and they’re at kid’s understanding level. The ones I had were Arch Books from the late 60s, early 70s - they were sold by our church. My mother’s biggest problem was that I’d beg for a new one frequently and she and dad were kinda broke to be buying them. I did manage to wheedle a few - my favorites were “The Great Promise” about Abraham and Sarah (lots of neat camel illustrations), “Simeon’s Secret” about Simeon seeing the baby Jesus, “The Good Samaritan”, and this one about Jonah.


I see that Arch Books are still being sold but seem to have been re-illustrated and re-titled several times since I was a kid. (The Jonah one seems to have been retitled about 3 times.) I’ve often thought about buying a few more from the era when I was reading them.

I also had some Little Golden Book type books about Jesus, and kids saying prayers. The Jesus one was called “The Beloved Son” and I remember my mother worrying about my reading it. I couldn’t understand what was wrong with a Jesus book. As an adult I see it was based on the KJV and she was obviously worried there was something “Protestant” in it, but if there was, 5-year-old me couldn’t tell.
 
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As opposed to, say, killing all the first-born in Egypt? Let’s not pretend the Bible is not equally violent.
 
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