Fears of a Four Year Old (Fantasy v. Reality)

Boo loves movies. Well, sort of.

For the longest time, if you even mentioned the “m” word, she’d scream “NO!” as though you were proposing to take her to be a tester at a dental floss factory. She wouldn’t watch a DVD, even if it was for a show that she’d already seen on TV our on tape-delay, courtesy of our DVR. Sorry Barney. You’re SOL. (Awww shucky darns!)

We keep our kids “screen time” pretty limited, so we were happy to keep the TV limited to the most benign, pedestrian shows out there. While her 4-year-old peers are loving Scooby Doo and Super Why, she’s content with Signing Time and Oswald. Even then, the high drama of Angelina Ballerina (Eeegads – will Angelina’s new ballet slippers arrive in time, or will she lose her spot to her nemisis?) is often too much to bear.

Where does this come from? I have no idea. The first time I recall her really expressing fear at a fictional character was when we took her on a double-date with Popping Bubbles and Mr. W’s LW to a Sesame Street Live show. I think she was about two and a half. She had seen the show the year before and loved it. We thought this would be a chance to ingrain a more permanent memory for our $70 family pricetag.

Oh my, did we create a permanent memory.

It wasn’t a good one, though.

She reached her limit at about 20 minutes into the show, where she became a screaming, sobbing mess. I spent the rest of the time in the foyer holding and rocking her. Who knew a 6-foot blue furry monster screaming about cookies could be so frightening. Well, uh, hummm. Maybe if I was less than half his size and a quarter of his weight, I would be a little freaked out too.

So, now she’s four. She’s a little better now. We made it through Mary Poppins a few weeks ago, but the rainy day scene where they jumped into the chalk paintings was a little touch and go. I think we’re also cool with Dumbo. Flying elephants are apparently in the clear.

On the other hand, The Little Mermaid’s Sea Witch, 101 Dalmations‘ Cruella DeVille, and Cinderella’s Wicked Stepmother are still off-limits. And let’s not even mention Malificent from Sleeping Beauty (pictured above). We read that book to her the other day and she was up at least twice that night with nightmares. We went to Wall-E yesterday and she spent the better part of the movie on my lap shuddering in fear over robots trying to save a seedling in a boot and insanely obese people in hover chairs drinking cupcake slurpees.

All of this fear is from a girl who loves to watch nature documentaries. Piles of bat guano. No problem. Wolves chasing caribou and eating a calf. No eyelashes batted.

What do we learn from this? Fantasy is scarier than reality for Boo. But think about it. Is that really a bad thing?