Parenting Advice From Joy Berry: Kids and Scary Theme Park Rides
An invitation to my nephew’s wedding in Southern California presented a perfect opportunity to fulfill my promise to take my granddaughters to Disneyland. Some accumulated coupons and a red-hot, off-season package deal allowed us to stay for full four nights and days at the hotel and theme park.
We were happily ensconced in our methodical efforts to ride all of the rides we had circled on the Disneyland map when we encountered a very unhappy guest in the line for the Alice in Wonderland ride. In between plaintive sobs, a little girl pleaded with her parents, “Please don’t make me go! I’m scared. Just take me to the car and I’ll stay there without crying. I promise…”
Unfortunately the parents seemed to be impervious to the little girl’s pleas, and everyone waiting in line was visibly uncomfortable with what seemed to be the parents’ indifference to their daughter.
One particularly distraught stranger spoke up. “If she does not want to go on the ride, why make her?”
The mother shot back a vitriolic response. “We just dropped $150 bucks to ride these rides and she’s going on them whether she likes it or not!”
“She’ll be okay once she gets on the ride,” the father assured the stranger. “She’s just a little upset because she just went on the Snow White ride and she thought it was scary.”
Hello! I thought to myself. The key word here is “scary.” And what part of that word sounds like fun?
This is not the first time I have watched misguided parents force their children to do “fun activities” that were actually terrifying and not any fun at all. The rationale that accompanies such behavior usually goes something like this: “Because the child has never done this activity before, he or she does not know that it is fun. Therefore I am going to force the child to do the activity so that he or she can learn that it is fun, and as a result have a good time.”
What this rationale does not take into consideration is the normal developmental stages that a child goes through. For example, adults know that the wicked witch on the Snow White ride is not real and therefore cannot hurt them. But the same is not true for a child entrenched in the Intuitive Stage of development, where fictional characters are as real as nonfictional characters. If adults would stop and think how frightening a real-life wicked witch could be, they might reconsider forcing a very young child to experience one.
There’s something else at stake when parents force their children to do things before the children are ready to do them: We are asking children to go against their instincts. Fear is one of the main things that helps keep kids safe because it is fear that prompts kids to avoid danger.
When we force a child to override his or her fear, and when we reward the child for doing so, we inadvertently encourage that child to ignore the fear—and that could lead to disastrous results. Healthy fear is something that needs to be nurtured, not stifled.
Meanwhile, the best person to determine what is actually fun for a child is the child. And what might be fun for one child might not necessarily be fun for anyone else.
The key is to be completely honest about the purpose of an activity, event, or outing. If it is for a child to have fun, everything should be completely child-centered and, as much as possible, the child should be able to choose what happens. On the other hand, if the purpose is to have the child share enjoyable experiences with others, there might need to be a compromise in the choice of activities. This is where taking turns choosing a fun activity is appropriate.
I recall that two years ago, my six-year-old granddaughter was fearful about many of the rides at Disneyland. As a result, one adult took her to less threatening attractions while the other adult took her older sister on the more sophisticated rides.
This year, Sekai was chomping at the bit to go on all the rides (including all of the high speed rollercoaster rides) with her older sister and me. No fears, no tears, just an enormous amount of fun that will reside with my granddaughter’s great memories for a long time to come.
