Wednesday, October 26, 2011

Is Halloween Too Scary for Kids?

(Thanks for submitting this article, Roxane! This is from 'The Faster Times')

We take Halloween deadly serious at my house. In our front yard, heaps of fresh dirt cover new graves, a bloody brain roasts on a hibachi, femurs litter the ground. Standing amid all this store-bought devastation, 9-year-old Ethan inserts a severed arm into his own sweater sleeve, then gravely offers to shake my hand.

Is it really healthy to allow kids to feel the chill of good old fashioned terror this season? Or am I setting up my son for sleepless nights and future therapy? On the web, discussions of this parental concern are as plentiful as leftover candy corn.

Psychologists note that children younger than ten may be most vulnerable to Halloween’s horrors as they often have a hard time distinguishing the real and the not real: A kindergartner may be truly terrified of the zombie lurching at her, even if beneath the undead trappings it’s only jolly Uncle Fred.

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