Thursday, May 14, 2015

War and The Disney Princesses



Recently, when I was driving my granddaughter home from pre-school, we passed a memorial for those who died in WWII. She asked me what it was, and I told her. Her next question threw me for a loop: “What is war, Grandma?” I told her it was when two countries have a fight. She seemed fine with that answer, for now. But she is a curious child, and I know it will come up again, and I want to be ready. So, I went to see what was on the Internet about how to discuss war with a toddler. It seems the consensus was that there is no easy way to explain it to children, toddlers and up.

It seems, though, that it is not a quick conversation. It is one where the concept of freedom needs to be explained. For toddlers, you can just say that freedom is when people can be able to do what they want, as long as it doesn’t hurt other people, without be afraid of being punished. For example, the Evil step-mother in Cinderella would not let Cinderella go to the ball, but the Fairy Godmother stepped in and helped Cinderella go to the ball. Using examples they can understand will help small children understand better an abstract concept.

That can give you a good transition to talking about war. You can continue with the Cinderella example. Explain how if Cinderella was one country and the Step-mother was the ruler, sometimes other countries (the Godmother, the mice) have to go and help Cinderella..

One website I went to said you need to discuss with your children that not everyone is good; there are evil people in the world. They know this already; they have seen Maleficent, Japhar, the Evil Queen, and numerous other Disney villains in action. They already know the world is filled with bad people. What we have to do is to assure them that the good guys will protect us from these people.

You can also use this opportunity to show the troops to your child as the heroes of the story and explain how much we all owe those people for stepping up and fighting the villains of the world so we can have a safe life here. It is important to reassure the child that he/she is in no danger, so they can go back to being a kid.

Now, you may be saying that this is deceiving the child; that I can’t keep the bad guys from her door ( try to stop me!), and I know that, but at four she doesn’t need to go to bed at night and worry about the Big Bad Wolf coming to knock down her door. She has an answer for her question for now; this is not the last time this issue will come up, and as she grows so will the conversation.



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