I’ve always been conflicted about exactly how much I should scare my kids. I don’t mean the jumping out of closets type of scaring: as far as I’m concerned, you can never have too much of that sort of thing. Prepares them for future zombie apocalypses, and all that. No, I mean the type of scaring that involves things that are far worse than zombies in the closet, if for no other reason than that they are more likely to happen. Things like chopping their fingers off with that butterfly knife their crazy uncle gave them for Christmas, or having to work jobs that require them to wear funny hats for the rest of their lives because they majored in keg tapping in college.
The question is: should you simply tell them to be careful waving that stick around because they could hurt somebody, or should you tell them to be careful waving that stick around because your best friend in grade school put his eye out playing with a sharp stick that looked exactly like that one. (Even though he wasn’t your best friend. And he didn’t exactly put his eye out. But he did get hurt. And dammit, just put down that stick already.)
In other words, is it okay to go overboard a little when you’re trying to warn them of the potential consequences of their unwise choices?
Which is better? The light touch: “If you run out into the street without looking you might get hit by a car, and it will be like the worst ouchie you have ever had. Ever. Plus you’ll miss the party.”
Or the heavy-handed approach, otherwise known as the “James Joyce describing the torments of hell” touch: “The next time you run out into the street without looking a ginormous truck is going to come along and squash you like a bug and you’ll be in the middle of the street, screaming in agony for hours until you finally, gratefully, die.”
In years past, I was always a fan of the former. My reasoning was: why scare them into potential squirrelishness? In other words, why take a chance on creating one of those flinchy kids, the kind that are afraid of everything and everyone, and who, unfortunately, usually end up being the kind of kids that other children delight in tormenting (thus perpetuating the cycle of flinchyness)? Those kids—the ones who go to the pool but won’t get wet, or who scream when they see a strange dog across the street—kind of drive me crazy. Seeing one of those kids hyperventilate because a bee landed on the picnic table next to them always makes me think: take it easy, kid—the world’s really not that scary. Or at least, it used to. Then my first child turned into a teenager. And I realized that, for one thing, the world actually can be a pretty scary place, and for another, to a teenager, the only good warning is a terrifying warning.
Our parents and grandparents knew this. They didn’t show us “safety clips” in driver’s ed—they showed us “Blood on the Highway.” And after that, when we finally got our licenses, they didn’t just tell us not to pick up hitch-hikers—they told us awful stories that made “Texas Chain-Saw Massacre” look like a public service announcement.
And the thing is, maybe they were right. Not about the guy with a hook for a hand who hangs out at make out point to harass/dismember unwary “parkers,” but about the necessity of a really good scary story to make a teenager sit up and listen.
Who knows? Maybe it really does take all of those years of flinching to remind you to wear your seat belt and drive the speed limit. And watch out for zombies, of course.