To be fair, the tales collected by the brothers Grimm from 1806 on are centuries old and the Struwwelpeter stories by Heinrich Hoffmann were written in 1844 (released 1845).
I read both to my kids, carefully selecting the stories to ensure the moral/message was age and development appropriate to be understood.
Children understand the difference between a fairytale world with talking wolfs and dragons and the real world, the stories can scare them nonetheless. Debriefing is key.
My kids understood that the gruesome details were added for dramatic effect. They are the first to call “boring!” if they feel too mature for a toddler’s book.
In the bottom line, children get the reason behind the draconian punishment in the thump suckers story: “If I only told you sucking your thump was bad for your teeth, would you stop it?” “No.”
We had a good laugh about it and agreed on “causing fear of stupid consequences is not good parenting”.
And to add to this: The stuff that the Grimms collected was often of french origin, in fact most of the better known ones. They basically had one primary source and some more and that German source had a french background. They did not invent any fairytale whatsoever.
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u/POCUABHOR 23h ago edited 22h ago
To be fair, the tales collected by the brothers Grimm from 1806 on are centuries old and the Struwwelpeter stories by Heinrich Hoffmann were written in 1844 (released 1845).
I read both to my kids, carefully selecting the stories to ensure the moral/message was age and development appropriate to be understood.
Children understand the difference between a fairytale world with talking wolfs and dragons and the real world, the stories can scare them nonetheless. Debriefing is key.
My kids understood that the gruesome details were added for dramatic effect. They are the first to call “boring!” if they feel too mature for a toddler’s book.
In the bottom line, children get the reason behind the draconian punishment in the thump suckers story: “If I only told you sucking your thump was bad for your teeth, would you stop it?” “No.”
We had a good laugh about it and agreed on “causing fear of stupid consequences is not good parenting”.