Catholic Parenting Or Utter Nonsense?
My wife was reading through a book last night entitled, “Guiding Your Catholic Preschooler” by Kathy Pierce and Lori Rowland, a book that neither of us can remember purchasing. Suddenly she blurts out, “What?!”
So of course I had to ask.
“Books,” she says, beginning the section. “What is your child looking at and reading about in his books? Do they have witches and terribly evil characters? Stories such as Snow White, Hansel and Gretel or Sleeping Beauty with their spells and witches are the worst!
There are thousands of books which do not involve these characters, spells and trances. Some good choices are Sesame Street books, Bible Stories and informative books such as ‘All about Fire Trucks,’ ‘All About Animals,’ ‘All About Colors, Circus, Trains.’ ”
[snip]
At the age of 4 or 5 and younger, your child should not be exposed to levitating, trances and crystal balls, no matter how silly or insignificant it seems! Also, why read books whose characters call each other liars, even if in not so many words. Why select books that talk about stealing or who use words like “stupid,” “dumb,” and “kill.”
We just sort of stared at each other. Fairy tales? These people have a problem with fairy tales? I immediately thought of Chesterton:
My first and last philosophy, that which I believe in with unbroken certainty, I learnt in the nursery. I generally learnt it from a nurse; that is, from the solemn and star-appointed priestess at once of democracy and tradition. The things I believed most then, the things I believe most now, are the things called fairy tales. They seem to me to be the entirely reasonable things. They are not fantasies: compared with them other things are fantastic. Compared with them religion and rationalism are both abnormal, though religion is abnormally right and rationalism abnormally wrong. Fairyland is nothing but the sunny country of common sense. It is not earth that judges heaven, but heaven that judges earth; so for me at least it was not earth that criticised elfland, but elfland that criticised the earth. I knew the magic beanstalk before I had tasted beans; I was sure of the Man in the Moon before I was certain of the moon. This was at one with all popular tradition. Modern minor poets are naturalists, and talk about the bush or the brook; but the singers of the old epics and fables were supernaturalists, and talked about the gods of brook and bush. That is what the moderns mean when they say that the ancients did not “appreciate Nature,” because they said that Nature was divine. Old nurses do not tell children about the grass, but about the fairies that dance on the grass; and the old Greeks could not see the trees for the dryads.
But I deal here with what ethic and philosophy come from being fed on fairy tales. If I were describing them in detail I could note many noble and healthy principles that arise from them. There is the chivalrous lesson of “Jack the Giant Killer”; that giants should be killed because they are gigantic. It is a manly mutiny against pride as such. For the rebel is older than all the kingdoms, and the Jacobin has more tradition than the Jacobite. There is the lesson of “Cinderella,” which is the same as that of the Magnificat– EXALTAVIT HUMILES. There is the great lesson of “Beauty and the Beast”; that a thing must be loved BEFORE it is loveable. There is the terrible allegory of the “Sleeping Beauty,” which tells how the human creature was blessed with all birthday gifts, yet cursed with death; and how death also may perhaps be softened to a sleep. But I am not concerned with any of the separate statutes of elfland, but with the whole spirit of its law, which I learnt before I could speak, and shall retain when I cannot write. I am concerned with a certain way of looking at life, which was created in me by the fairy tales, but has since been meekly ratified by the mere facts.
[snip]
When we are asked why eggs turn to birds or fruits fall in autumn, we must answer exactly as the fairy godmother would answer if Cinderella asked her why mice turned to horses or her clothes fell from her at twelve o’clock. We must answer that it is MAGIC. It is not a “law,” for we do not understand its general formula. It is not a necessity, for though we can count on it happening practically, we have no right to say that it must always happen. It is no argument for unalterable law (as Huxley fancied) that we count on the ordinary course of things. We do not count on it; we bet on it. We risk the remote possibility of a miracle as we do that of a poisoned pancake or a world-destroying comet. We leave it out of account, not because it is a miracle, and therefore an impossibility, but because it is a miracle, and therefore an exception. All the terms used in the science books, “law,” “necessity,” “order,” “tendency,” and so on, are really unintellectual, because they assume an inner synthesis, which we do not possess. The only words that ever satisfied me as describing Nature are the terms used in the fairy books, “charm,” “spell,” “enchantment.” They express the arbitrariness of the fact and its mystery. A tree grows fruit because it is a MAGIC tree. Water runs downhill because it is bewitched. The sun shines because it is bewitched.
My ears were getting hot. Chesterton had it right. And he would have it right again, in just another minute, as my wife began the next section:
Toys…What about weapons? This is especially true for boys. No wonder our jails are full of men. We raise boys with guns, swords, army men, hand cuffs and the list goes on. Eliminate these toys as much as possible, especially when the child is really young. You can slowly introduce them as he realizes they exist. He will see them at friends’ houses. Explain, in private to your child why you do not really like the toy very much. Refer to specific situations which may have just occurred with the friend. Let them know they can be dangerous and hurt people … You must punish even if pretending bad behavior because “someone will get hurt, and that would make God sad.”
Did I mention Chesterton had something to say about this too? I did? Good. From his essay, The Terror of a Toy:
Only this Christmas I was told in a toy-shop that not so many bows and arrows were being made for little boys; because they were considered dangerous. It might in some circumstances be dangerous to have a little bow. It is always dangerous to have a little boy. But no other society, claiming to be sane, would have dreamed of supposing that you could abolish all bows unless you could abolish all boys.
With the merits of the latter reform I will not deal here. There is a great deal to be said for such a course; and perhaps we shall soon have an opportunity of considering it. For the modern mind seems quite incapable of distinguishing between the means and the end, between the organ and the disease, between the use and the abuse; and would doubtless beak the boy along with the boy, as it empties out the baby with the bath.
But let us, by way of a little study in this mournful state of things, consider this case of the dangerous toy. Now the first and most self-evident truth is that, of all the things a child sees and touches, the most dangerous toy is about the least dangerous thing. There is hardly a single domestic utensil that is not much more dangerous than a little bow and arrows. He can burn himself in the fire, he can boil himself in the bath, he can cut his throat with the carving-knife, he can scald himself with the kettle, he can choke himself with anything small enough, he can break his neck off anything high enough. He moves all day long amid a murderous machinery, as capable of killing and maiming as the wheels of the most frightful factory. He plays all day in a house fitted up with of torture like the Spanish Inquisition. And, while he thus dances in the shadow of death, he is to be saved from all the perils of possessing a piece of string, tied to a bent bough or twig. When he is a little boy it generally takes him some time even to learn how to hold the bow. When he does hold it, he is delighted if the arrow flutters for a few yards like a feather or an autumn leaf. But even if he grows a little older and more skilful, and has yet not learned to despise arrows in favour of aeroplanes, the amount of damage he could conceivably do with his little arrows would be about one-hundredth part of the damage he could always in any case have done by simply picking up a stone in the garden.
Now you do not keep a little boy from throwing stones by preventing him from ever seeing stones. You do not do it by locking up all the stones in the Geological Museum, and only issuing tickets of admission to adults. You do not do it by trying to pick up all the pebbles on the beach, for fear he should practise throwing them into the sea You do not even adopt so obvious and even pressing a social reform as forbidding roads to be made of anything but asphalt, or directing that all gardens shall be made on clay and none on gravel. You neglect all these great opportunities opening before you; you neglect all these inspiring vistas of social science and enlightenment. When you want to prevent a child from throwing stones, you fall back on the stalest and most sentimental and even most superstitious methods. You do it by trying to preserve some reasonable authority and influence over the child. You trust to your private relation with the boy, and not to your public relation with the stone…If you can teach a child not to throw a stone, you can teach him when to shoot an arrow; if you cannot teach him anything, he will always have something to throw.
Keep Chesterton in your library and read him often. He will save you from these nonsensical parenting books more often than you might think.
Filed under: Chesterton, Common Sense, Family
For a balanced view on books, stories and toys from somone who really takes both the danger of the occult and the value of immagination seriously, I would recommend Landscape with Dragons, by Michael O’Brien.
I’ll take “utter nonsense” for 500 Alex.
I imagine this book also advises against the horrors of taking one’s kids trick-or-treating. Heaven forbid my children should ever dress up as Dora and Diego and get some free candy.
I wonder if Chesterton has something witty about trick-or-treating…
Hate to disagree with you, but we’ve avoided books with witches, fairies, spells, and the rest. All of them are straight from the occult, and those are things that no Catholic youngster should be filling his head with. We also don’t do Halloween, for the same reason. We want no confusion whatsoever that things from the occult can be “fun”.
As for guns and weapons, there is an important reason we do not allow our kids to play with toy guns: we have several real guns in the house, and our kids will be learning to shoot when they are old enough. From the earliest age, we wanted absolutely no confusion about firearms. Guns are real, not toys, and very dangerous. You don’t touch them until parents determine you are old enough and responsible enough, and y ou have been trained. Getting toy guns and running around like you’re shooting your friends introduces potentially dangerous confusion.
Chris, I hear you.
I am a terrible dad who is going to ruin all my kids’ childhoods by not lying to them about Santa Claus.
I just want them to believe me when I tell them about their guardian angel.
Kevin,
I would bet that you believed in Santa Claus when you were a young child. Do you not believe that your guardian angel really exists?
Steve,
Great post. I though of this Chesterton quote immediately when, last night, my wife reported that earlier in the day she just barely stopped our two-year-old daughter from impaling her nine-month-old sister with a good-sized rock.
It takes some doing to consistently have “some reasonable authority and influence over” a two-year-old. So, until Catherine turns the corner, my wife and I will be relying on a combination of reasonable authority and quick reflexes.
Chris,
Absolutely agree with you about the guns. I got the these are not toys!!! notion pounded into my head early. Comes with the rural upbringing, where you can assume that every household has real guns hiding somewhere. Although, then again, I do remember toy guns, as well as some cousins who were (ahem) less than always conscientious about gun safety with BB guns …
I’m pretty sure that my boys aren’t going to be in the same danger of confusion with their toy light sabers, though.
peace,
BB guns can be dangerous, no doubt. My husband had 2 teeth knocked out when he was about 12…that pellet was just inches from his brain and eyes. I could have a one-eyed husband! : )
I can appreciate the reasons one wouldn’t let their kids use toy guns or enjoy Halloween, but I certainly don’t think it must always be advised against – as the parenting book quoted above suggests.
In speaking of toy guns, I personally see it as an exercise in using their imagination which is a healthy thing to do as a child. I’m only speculating, but it seems that the boys who grow up and actually run around misusing guns are the boys who were introduced to the harsh realities of life at too young an age. They never had the chance to just be kids, pretending and such. The boys who are given the chance to use their imaginations, whether it’s with a toy gun, a sword, a ball or whatever, aren’t likely to be confused about gun safety because they’re the same ones whose parents are taking the time to educate them. Do they have to use guns in their pretending? Obviously not. But I think it can be okay if they do.
We have real guns in our home, too, used for hunting, and my husband is open with the children about what their purpose is. Could it be confusing? Only if my husband didn’t take the time, especially as they get older, to teach them to respect a gun’s proper use and how to use it out in the field. I would argue that the confusion comes less from playing with toy guns than from a lack of formation and parental authority – which is Chesterton’s point, right?
The same is true of mysterious and dark elements in children’s literature. There really is evil in the world, but how does a Catholic parent introduce this idea into his child’s mind in a seminal form without scaring the pants off the kid? “Son, you must know, the Devil is real and is prowling about seeking to devour you as a lion devours its prey. So don’t forget to say your prayers.” In the traditional fairy tales the occultish elements aren’t fun, they’re scary, and it achieves the purpose of instilling in children the fear they ultimately will need as adults, but in a form they can handle as a child.
Halloween can be (and often is) turned into something ugly and sinister, but it can also simply be a chance for kids to dress up as a princess or a frog (or, as I’ve done, as a saint b/c we also celebrate All Saints Day) and greet one’s neighbors and get candy. I know, it has roots in something evil, but honestly, what kid has any cognizance of that?
Everything can be skewed by faithless people, but I don’t deny my kids Christmas b/c some treat it materialistically, or card games b/c some use them for gambling, or a sporting event b/c some see it as a chance to get drunk and rowdy. If all the well-intentioned parents completely avoid something like Halloween, then it really will become nothing but demons and witches.
Sarah,
You make good points that I was hoping to get to.
My wife grew up with guns; I didn’t. We own guns because of her background, not mine. We both played with toy guns as children - and if I didn’t have a toy, I could always find a stick that looked approximately like one - but the difference between us is that she also was taught how to handle the real thing from a very young age.
She was taught to fear it and respect it; how to aim it and how to be careful with it. We were talking about this last night. She said, “I could squirt you with my water gun all day, but when my father put his .38 in my hands, I knew it was something different.”
The distinction lies in education. In taking your children out shooting and letting them see the destructive power and how carefully it must be handled.
I wish I had been around guns growing up. If I had, I wouldn’t be nervous around them today. I never learned how to properly handle them, or practiced enough with them to be confident about using them. For that matter, I wish someone had taken me hunting. I’ve still never done it.
As for fairy tales, I agree. I’m not a big fan of the idea of books like Harry Potter because I feel that they can promote, in a very casual way, the idea that the occult can be a good thing, and that kids may want to emulate the characters.
But from what I remember of the old fairy tales, evil was evil and good was good. I have a friend, actually, who strongly dislikes the Shrek movies for children because, despite their humorous appeal to adults, they turn the fairy tale archetypes on their heads. Ogres aren’t simply misunderstood - they eat children. If a child is exposed to Grimm and Anderson tales and Shrek at the same time, he’s liable to get confused.
Barring the Wizard of Oz, I never once heard the term “good witch” growing up. It never even entered my conception.
Steve and Sarah — good points about traditional fairy tales introducing evil in a way kids can understand, and always portraying it as something bad. I had Harry Potter more in mind; don’t want to open up that whole can of worms in this thread, but that’s an example of good characters using magic and other occult powers for good ends — which is the sort of confusion we’re concerned about.
We didn’t have guns in the house when I was growing up, either, and I never went hunting until I was an adult. Really wished that was something my father had exposed me to, and it’s something I’m going to make sure my kids get to do. The particular firearms we have now are too powerful for even our 12 year old to handle (hey, even I have trouble managing the kick from a .45 pistol or a 12-gauge shotgun), but I plan to get him started with a .22 rifle soon.
I’m starting to really like chesterton just from reading your blogs, steve
Toy weapons are a good thing for young boys, especially when tempered with fairy tales. Even if they just use their fingers for guns, or a wimpy little stick for a sword (like I did), if you find a young boy (or several) make-believe fighting and ask them what’s going on there is usually some struggle of good vs evil (cops and robbers for example) and the general rule was that the good guys win. Why do the good guys win? The stories always say so. As they get older, the fighting takes on different meanings. This can include standing up for what is right, defending your faith, family and/or country as needed, including with force. Its not a pretty fact of life, but there will always come a time when something a man loves comes under attack and having a solid background (and back bone) is always an asset in that case. I speak in terms of boys and men because I am one.
I don’t remember who said this one time, but it rings very true “Fairy tales are not there to tell a young child that dragons exisit, they already know this. A fairy tale tells a child that a dragon can be slain.” (Might have been Chesterton and I probably butchered it.) The world is a dark and dangerous place much of the time, and fairy tales can be useful tools for teaching caution and trust in divine providence.