Friday, May 2, 2008

A question about childrearing

Just an interesting discussion my husband and I had last night ... any thoughts?

I own two VERY old books of fairy tales that used to belong to my Nanny (my paternal grandmother). Now, I'm not talking Disney-fied, romanti-fied, pretty fairy tales. I'm talking the old school Germanic "Cinderella's stepsisters cut parts of their feet off so they can fit into the glass slipper" fairy tales.

I grew up with these books - my grandmother read to me from them, as did my parents. And I'm talking from a young age - like 3 or 4 - and I was a very sheltered, very easily traumatized, impressionable little kid. And I don't remember any of them upsetting me any too much (not that my memory of 20 years plus into the past is necessarily that great) ... which must be some indication that kids are pretty resilient and can handle these things. And if that's the case, well, as I said, I grew up on these stories, these books are 80 years old or so, and have a great value to me I'd love to share with my future children.

But was I strangely immune somehow? Is that kind of "villain gets their eyes pecked out by birds" ending somehow damaging to impressionable children? And for anyone thinking I am pro-these books and Ari (hubby) is against, period - not the case. We have both been going back and forth it was actually an interesting conversation that I would just love to let others in on, since that's what blogs and the internet etc. are for!

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