Teaching Children to Understand Unhappy Endings
And why there is no such thing.
I made the mistake recently of letting my children watch a movie for which they were possibly not ready. The Neverending Story, one of my childhood favorites from the eighties, is a storybook tale full of imagination, fantastical creatures, and synthesizers. What’s not to love?
Not far into the plot, the protagonist’s horse, Artax, is claimed by the Swamps of Sadness, a murky bog that can suck one into its depths if he/she submits to it and loses hope. The scene is admittedly heart-breaking. It brought a tear to my eye despite my calloused adult heart and having watched it countless times when I was young.
“Please never let us watch that movie again,” my daughter cried as we paused the movie half-way through.
Her words elicited instant guilt, a sinking realization that I’d made a poor parenting decision. Also, by exposing her to something painful, I had breached her trust in me. Quite understandably. To make matters worse, the violation occurred just prior to bedtime. I lay with her for some time talking about the scene, trying to reassure her that it was going to be okay. Artax is brought back to life in the end, all concludes well. She was reassured days later when she insisted upon watching the second half of the movie and confirmed the happy ending for herself. When she saw Artax running across the plains of Fantasia again, all was right with the world.
It was curious to me that she didn’t expect it though. The scenario made me think about story arcs and how much we depend on them to inform our world and in some cases well-being. One of my favorite thinkers, Dr. Jordan Peterson, describes stories as powerful entities that become our framework for understanding reality. I believe him to be correct. Stories are structured on a basic level to be a set-up, a conflict, and a resolution. Be it books, movies, or life, no story is complete without a resolution. This is the pact I have made with reality, and it allows me to cope with conflict when it arises.
This is the framework of hope. It allows us to survive the proverbial swamps of sadness in life.
Elise doesn’t have this framework yet, but I hope to teach it through my counsel and through stories. Ideally I’ll use more wisdom in chosing the ones she is or isn’t ready to hear. Some might argue this point or consider me naïve. Perhaps they are right; however, I am not ignorant of the suffering encountered in the world and have indeed taken part in it myself. I don’t mean to suggest that life is free of sorrow. What I am suggesting is that those are the conflict parts of the arc. With time, maybe a lot of time, resolution will come.
Perhaps I am setting her up for disappointment when inevitable pain is experienced, but I hope she’ll understand that she has simply yet to reach the end. That she will have the courage to see the story to its conclusion.
Originally published at https://facingmonsters.com on April 29, 2020.
