Two months ago nothing scared my 20 month-old son. But as his awareness of his surroundings has increased over the last few weeks, he has grown increasingly weary of weird looking things like spiders and strange sounding things like my electric razor. This change was especially evident during Halloween. As most parents know, ghosts, ghouls, and goblins elicit some interesting and funny responses from kids. Sure, we try to comfort and assure them that the ghost is not real, and the older kids seem to get it, but what about the younger kids?
Studies suggest that toddler-age kids have difficulty distinguishing reality from fantasy, notwithstanding assurances from adults. Belgian developmental psychologist Jean Piaget discovered that many kids have difficulty discerning fantasy from reality before 7 years of age. I imagine that the younger kids are, the more they struggle with this. This means that for a 2 year-old child, the ghost hanging above the porch at the neighbor’s house on Halloween night was real, no matter what Mommy said!
Other studies support Piaget’s assertion. A recent study in the British Journal of Developmental Psychology found that when 3-5 year olds were asked to distinguish real characters such as knights and Michael Jordan from fictional characters such as monsters and dragons, they did so correctly less than 40% of the time. Their ability to discern real from fictional characters dropped as age decreased.
All this suggests that younger kids actually see monsters, ghosts, and goblins as being real, but this is only a problem during Halloween, right? Wrong. Children are bombarded with fictional content on television that, while innocent to adults, may create dilemmas for younger minds that are unable to discern reality from fiction. This means that if a 3 year-old sees someone get killed in a movie, he or she may think that it actually happened, regardless of a parent’s assurances. It is thus important for parents to avoid letting young children watch images on television that may upset their delicate minds, at least until they are able to tell fact from fiction. Fortunately, most young children 2-5 years-of-age prefer playing to watching grown-up shows.
The counsel to avoid exposing young children to potentially troubling images on television is consistent with the words of Jacob who reminds us that the feelings of our children are “exceedingly tender and chaste and delicate,” and that we should avoid subjecting them to things that may unduly disrupt their delicate minds.
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