As parents, is it wise to let our children see, hear, or read about "scary" things? What does Scripture say about this? ;The Bible is plenty full of scary situations-- not from pretend creatures like ghosts and goblins, but from very real-life evil men and angels. Fear in children is natural. As G. K. Chesterton put it,
“Fairy tales are more than true – not because they tell us dragons exist, but because they tell us dragons can be beaten.”
Some of you might be at this point shaking your heads, thinking "what the heck is she saying? Dragons do NOT exist, and the LAST thing I want is to fill my child's head with a new fear over something that doesn't even exist." Think about it this way: to a child, so many things are frightening, most of them involving potential physical harm. They're scared of stuffed cows, of quick-moving dogs, of strangers, of the dark. One day they'll outgrow all those fears by bullying or avoiding them; they'll learn that they are bigger than those things, or that they're so improbable that they don't need to think about them. But ;unless they've been taught not just to avoid or bully fears, but to face them, they'll "graduate" to fears of other things-- fear of failure, of rejection, of humiliation, of being alone, of being wrong.
