i bought a magazine recently and it had an article in it which talked abt whether fairy tales were healthy for children. mighty lengthy article. i didn't finish reading it.. i only read the front portion which argued against fairy tales.

it said that fairy tales were unhealthy because they're unrealistic and promote passiveness in people. example, cinderella and sleeping beauty, even snow white didn't have to do anything but had prince charming skipping up to their door step. that's only one example i rememebered.

hubby and i has begun singing to baby ethan every night. we ran out of songs one night, or maybe it was me who couldn't fall asleep, hubby suggested singing me a lullaby. we thought of the lyrics and yuck... i don't think we should even continue...

in "hush-a-bye baby", the cradle dropped from a tree! goodness...

we then started to talk abt lame and dark rhymes and wondered why they were called nursery rhymes and taught to children...

"london bridge"... what news to bring to the fair lady
"ring-a-ring o' roses"... sings abt black death
"humpty dumpty" is also quite sad... no one could fit him back... actually humpty dumpty was a canon used during the english civil war.
"it's raining, it's pouring"... he bumped his head and couldn't get up? my, it just means he died, didn't he?

some of the rhymes were written to describe historical events or to describe principles in life. but i wonder why they are taught to children????? an early history lesson?

those are "dark" rhymes.. or so i call it... then there are lame rhymes... one was in chinese that i remembered my grandma singing to me non-stop... it goes something like this:
喂喂, 不要怕, 你是好娃娃
自己跌到, 自己爬
你看山上, 为你开满红花
你们是好娃娃, 要自己跌到自己爬

i still remember thinking to myself why i would be consoled by a hill filled with blossoming red flowers... haha.. growing up in hdb singapore filled with trees that you can hardly see flowers. ok, the lame rhymes are a little extra here...

so are nursery rhymes and fairy tales good? i think they have their uses... for rhymes, literally teaching rhymes, teaching children to sing.. fairy tales, well, happy endings do come but children must learn that they need to take active steps towards it... take cinderella, it's a typical rags-to-riches story... but in real life, no fairy godmother is going to appear and you're not the only one with that one shoe size... it does have a happy ending. but like the show i watched with my kids, the pursuit of happiness, it's also a rags-to-riches story, but man, did that guy worked to get there. in the end, i think we must know that God will have the perfect ending for us in the end.

i find rhymes and fairy tales amusing... and now that i'm much older, it's interesting to find out the origin of the rhymes...

{ Friday, September 19 }