Childhood Essay Example

Childhood Essay Introduction

During the growth, development, and progression of a human baby to adulthood, there are tasks to be fulfilled in every stage and difficulties each step faces. The child must complete the duties of each period in his journey towards adulthood and move on to the next scene. In this process, the child may also encounter difficulties related to sibling rivalry, self-worth, moral responsibilities. The child who is alone on the path of growth and does not know what to do needs information to help and guide him in his journey. In this respect, the growth and development elements and fairy tales are unique resources for the child.

Body Paragraphs

Children, who carefully follow all kinds of events that develop in the environment from an early age, continue to carry the gains they have achieved in this period when they become adults. Therefore, they must undergo a careful "growth" process. On the other hand, fairy tales have a role in children's lives as a book that parents read, a movie or cartoon that is watched. In the study conducted by Sharmin at the "University of Michigan," he said that children are much more interested in cartoon content than in traditional academic learning ways (Habib 3). Although they can describe emotions as feelings, fairy tales are an excellent tool for understanding them concretely. For example, in the first "Little Red Cap" story (Grimm and Grimm 2) the concept of "trust" is made sense. What the wolf did to the little girl is perceived as a trap, not conforming to the concept of trust, and a "bad" act.

While kids can quickly forget what their parents said, there is a reason why main events in fairy tales are never forgotten. Fairy tales, which trigger children's imagination positively and expand the limits of thought, provide enjoyable learning and "preparation for life" with the fantastic metaphors it contains.

Tales are an essential guide for the child to uncover his "inner resources" to overcome fear, anxiety, inadequacy, and uncertainty and discover hope. The fiction of fairy tales containing various difficulties and having a happy ending is a source of hope for children. At the same time, the hero is left alone with feelings of fear and anxiety, is incapable of dealing with complex events, and finds solutions to the problems in the story's content. For example, in the fairy tale "Little Red Cap," the little girl is a charming, well-behaved girl who obeys her mother's words. But when she goes into the forest, she is deceived by talking to the wolf. In other words, firstly, the tale evokes good feelings and then a sense of guilt that consists of fear and misbehavior. In the end, the hero is rescued unharmed and learns his lesson. There are such examples in many stories. Children who read or listen to these stories create many emotions such as fear, success, and guilt in children's minds (Grimm and Grimm 1).

The wonderful world told in fairy tales contains the highest hopes and dreams of children. With these depictions, the accounts offer the reader an excellent and fulfilling perspective, the climax of longing and desire. The beautiful worlds depicted in the stories capture and attract the child. While fairy tales are popular with their benevolent figures and noble kings and queens, they are also full of witches, monsters, trolls, and other terrifying creatures. Some story adapters minimize the fear, malice, and violence in fairy tales, forgetting that many children particularly enjoy the dangerous situations in the story. Today, almost all of these elements have been eliminated from fairy tales due to pedagogical concerns and expert advice.

When the child listens to a tale, he experiences the same anxiety and fear that the protagonist encounters. The child, apart from the story, time and space with the reassuring limit of the tales, puts a distance between himself and the hero. This separation allows the protagonist to distance himself from the emotions he experiences. For this reason, they experience all these emotions in a simulator style in a safe environment. In other words, this situation is a virtual experience for the child. At the same time, the coping mechanisms of the protagonist who are confronted with frightening situations provide children with a rehearsal opportunity for the real-life challenges they will face in the future. The value or conduct that is intended to be conveyed through the story's hero and enjoyable narrative style is "presented" to the child in this way. The important thing here is that these values are not dictated directly to the child; they are not taught but presented. Here, in terms of conveying moral values to children, the contribution of fairy tale versions, in which various instructional and lesson-taking sentences are added at the end, to the development of children's morals is open to discussion.

One of today's education purposes is to enable the child to find the meaning of life. "Where did I come from, what is birth, what is death?" The child needs to find consistent answers over time to complex questions such as death, the meaning of life. For example, the child first makes sense of such questions in his world, interprets them in his way, or does not think about the problem in a more general framework. However, for the development of a healthy person, there is an obligation to find answers to living and the meaning of living.

It is also impossible for him to learn such information ready and packaged from a book or adults. In this process, which can also be seen as the acquisition of values, qualified fairy tales will significantly contribute to the child's development. The subjects discussed in the fairy tales indirectly enter the child's world while referring to the child's internal problems and tensions. In this respect, the child finds himself in a fairy tale before he becomes conscious. Although the story is not a direct suggestion tool, it is therefore moral. The most striking feature of fairy tales is that, as mentioned above, the good prevails in the war between good and evil.

Children cannot form rational relationships between facts like adults. They do their work in their mental world, and their imaginations are of great importance in this period. The fantastic dimension of the tale contains fantastic elements that, with one essential aspect, attract the child's attention powerfully. However, some stories can be especially objectionable to children. Stories that they cannot understand with their minds but may not be read to children, even for teaching purposes. For example, there are pretty wild elements in the "little red cap" story studied (Grimm and Grimm 2). This story, which can be scary when read even as an adult, can have serious effects on children's minds. Such tales have decreased considerably in the 21st century, and stories suitable for child psychology have been produced. These stories, which were prepared to advise listening to the mother, were written to keep the child under control by creating pressure with fear.

One of the studies on the fact that fairy tales are made to create control and perception on children; The story "little red cap" has a rape subtext and the perception of the story is that the little girl is responsible for her disobedience rape (Santos 1). Santos mentioned it in his article; LRC is an example and the one to be blamed for her own "rape." The wolf is not a male but symbolizes natural urges and social nonconformity. The real hero, the huntsman, represents "male governance" (Santos 1). Tales with sub-texts aim to shape society in this direction over the years and start teaching this way of thinking from children.

Childhood Essay Conclusion

After all, although fairy tales, cartoons, and animations are significant for children's development, overexposure can also cause children to be mistaken. Parents should be cautious and balance their approaches in order not to harm any potential development in childhood.

References

Grimm, Jacob, and Wilhelm Grimm. "Little Red Cap." Children’s and Household Tales (Grimms’ Fairy Tales), vol. 1, 1812, p. 2.

Habib, Khaled, and Tarek Soliman. "Cartoons’ effect in changing children mental response and behavior." Open Journal of Social Sciences 3.09 (2015): 248.

Santos, David. "SEXUAL WOLFISH: The Little Red Cap tale of the Grimm Brother’s." Fantasy and Science Fiction: The Human Mind, Our Modern World., Feb. 2012.