Why Kid's Stories should be Darker

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As a preschool teacher I'd say kids need stories with strong emotions. They don't experience quaintly. They're not angry. They're betrayed or furious. They're not sad. They're in despair and alone. They're not scared of their imagination. They're terrified of things that might be real. And, with them still learning their way out of ego-centrism, they are the only person who has ever felt like that. Stories give them a chance to experience a character fully feeling an overwhelming emotion and finding a way through it. They learn empathy, resilience, and emotional processing through seeing and hearing experiences like theirs and their experiences are darkly exaggerated, not lesser.

I think the Bambi example is actually a really good test of how to approach dark subject matter in children’s media: don’t show it, but by all means imply its presence. Let the story have the shadow of violence or horror, just not those things directly

This is really moving. By not allowing children to be scared, we fail to teach that it is ok to be scared.

honestly, every kid should read coraline by neil gaiman. it's from the perspective of a kid dealing with adversary all on her own yet it doesn't feel like a parody of childhood. it feels genuine.

This is something that's been itching me since I was the target demographic. Kids are a lot more emotionally complex than adults may realize. Yes, maybe they're not as emotionally complex as adults, but kids can understand concepts beyond good buys vs. bad guys, objective undeniable good vs objective undeniable evil. Hell, I'd wager to say that kids need more emotionally complex media to help with emotional and social development.

"Children aren't stupid, they just lack context." This video is healing, thank you!

That’s why spirited away and coralline are the best kids movie’s. It teaches kids to be brave and to hold their trust with themselves, and to not trust the judgment of someone just because they’re older. Like seriously that’s the best way to raise strong kids. And when I have kids one day I will make sure to limit the black and white world shows.

I remember my five-year-old cousin asking “why are the leaves Orange?” So I told him “they crumble up and die and then New ones grow in Spring” my grandma did not like that she said “he doesn’t need to comprehend death” which I completely agree with but still it’s a thing that happens in nature and I’m pretty sure he’s not gonna be sad over Leaf Edit : By “comprehend” I meant realization that him and everyone he knows is going to die One day. Thanks for all the likes and comments :)

A warning that every parent should take heed. If you are not there to educate your child on the hard things in life, they WILL find out without you, and you will not be in control when that happens, and the consequences will be far more dire. Your choice, help them step into the shallows. or wait for them to jump into the deep.

I think it's a good step that kids stories and movies are moving towards being more nuanced and serious. Granted, movies should never be an alternative to parenting nor should kids movies never be about happy stories anymore. But movies have a big impact on people, especially young audiences, and they can learn life lessons through them too. They should learn that life is much more serious than just constant dance numbers.

There is a quote from Don Bluth discussing this topic. "If you don’t show the darkness, you don’t appreciate the light. If it weren’t for December no one would appreciate May. It’s just important that you see both sides of that." You can really see that attitude in a lot of his films.

"The world isn't to be hidden from, it is to be found" 12:37 This quote gave me chills

No joke, the sheer ammount of sterilized content is one of the reasons I think there are so many edgelords. When I was a kid (and even as a pre-teen) I was very edgy, along with many of my friends and I think one of the reasons was the fact that we were from a full-time school. We would attend to classes in the morning and spend the entire afternoon under the school councelors watch. And the sheer ammount of sanitization of EVERYTHING was immense, specially considering almost all of the facility was composed of evangelical christians. One time a teacher even changed the symbol of our cultural fest for a symbol of another country because she said that the mask reminded her of the devil. This sterilization makes so that even children can't relate to really anything and they end up going for the extreme opposite of it as a sort of escapism from the flowery cotton candy world they are spoon fed since birth.

I would place Infinity Train and Over the Garden Wall right next to Coraline in Children's Horror, a real shame the first was cancelled on behalf of "being too dark and complex for children"... Which is ridiculous, the whole point of the show is for Children and Teenagers to find a creative solution to their predicaments, while still growing into the best version of themselves by getting a better understanding of the world around them, a true shame.

As a child I longed for this sort of content, not because "scary stuff is for adults/big kids" but because the dark and emotional was such a foreign concept in my media that I wanted to experience more of that. Gargoyles, BTAS, ATLA, and later Dark Souls were important in helping me heal and grow as a child as I experienced my heroes go through hard times and in a way it was both encouraging and comforting

Did anyone actually have a “happy” childhood? I had a pretty privileged upbringing, but I remember the chronic bullying, realizing that my parents marriage was not that great, the death of my grandfather, gratuitous amounts of homework, learning about violent crimes that were just going to be a part of my world, being told that these were the best years of my life and really not feeling it... A manifestation of anxiety disorders can be repeated/compulsive exposure to things that are upsetting, and in that case, the child should have someone there to help them regulate that impulse. But as this video says, most children will put down something that genuinely upsets them. And sometimes they might make it through something upsetting and just have questions. I work in a library, and I frequently have parents ask if something is appropriate for their child. And, I mean, I wouldn’t hand a five-year-old a copy of Tokyo Ghoul just because it’s a comic, and I once had to explain that Princess Mononoke wasn’t a children’s movie. But when a precocious nine-year-old wants to read a young adult book, I don’t always know what to say even if I have read that particular book. I suggested that the parent just be available for conversation, because the kid might have questions. I think the parent ultimately passed on the book because they took that as a, no, this is not appropriate, but my point stands. As said, “children aren’t stupid: they lack context”

This is also a reason to take issue with "it doesn't have to be good, it's for kids", I think. Because yes, it IS for kids. And kids are still people, they're not a monolith of fabricated innocence and bliss you have to maintain by only feeding them sweet sugary garbage. Kids WILL get bored of bad media, especially if you expose them to good media early on, and good media includes those darker and heavier elements without flinching at them.

When I was 16 I did some charity work at a daycare. It mostly came down to playing the Pokémon TCG with the more shy kids. Sometimes, by a school's need of constant testing, I had to study. What was fascinating, however, was that always those same kids came over and begged me to explain what I was studying. And they asked questions. Questions that were always relevant to the subject and that went quite deep. Kids are so much more curious than we often think. I'm afraid that the constant need of studios to sterilize their media is hampering that curiosity while we should be rewarding it

I was friends with Don Bluth a few years back. Not super close; just the same community, same neighborhood, etc. So I had a childhood friend with me at a Christmas party and I introduced them: "This is Don. You remember those movies like An American Tail and The Secret of NIMH, and all those? Don's the one who wrote and directed them and did the art and stuff." And my friend says, "You wrote The Secret of NIMH? That movie scared the sh*t out of me when I was 6." And do you know what he said? You know what Don Bluth actually said? "Well, it was supposed to!" Yep. Children's stories were a bit different back then.