There’s been a lot of controversy lately over the child-safeness of the movie, “Where the Wild Things Are.” I’ll admit, I’ve never read the book and I haven’t seen the movie. All I know is that there are a lot of heated emotions around the debate over whether this movie is too scary for children to go see.

According to one of CNN’s little polls, a great majority of Americans believe it is wrong to take a child to see a movie that might scare them. Well, let me tell you, I’m in a bit of disagreement with the rest of America.

At the same time, I’m in disagreement with the author of the book, whose attitude is “So what? If you’re scared, you wet your pants. Big deal. Get over it.” I wouldn’t want him for a role model! 

Here’s why I’m in disagreement with both sides of the opinion: Back when I was little, my parents did not allow us to celebrate Halloween. We didn’t go trick-or-treating, or go to haunted houses or hayrides, or dress up in costumes for Halloween. Instead, we did one of two things on this fun children’s holiday. We either sat in our darkened house with all the lights off so parents would not take their children to our house for trick-or-treating, or my parents lugged us all to church, where the parents went to a Bible study and we children watched a movie and had cider and doughnuts.

One year when they took us to church, we children watched a cartoon movie about a little boy who was throwing stones at a duck. One of the stones hit the duck in the head. The duck’s eye turned into a black X, the duck fell over and started bleeding, and it died. I believe the moral to this little tale was to be kind to others, including animals. Or maybe it was about lying, because the little boy did not tell his parents what he’d done and left them to wonder how the duck had died.

Anyway, the moral of the story was lost on me and I was horrified – terrified, scared and sad that the duck had died. I was just not prepared to see something die, even though it was a cartoon duck. That night, I couldn’t get that image out of my head, of seeing the duck fall over, bleed, and die. It played over and over in my mind.

A few years later near Easter, my elementary school teacher treated us kids to a movie. It was pretty common on the last day of school before a holiday break for us to have a “fun” day where we got to watch a movie. I was in third grade and this time, we watched Raiders of the Lost Ark. I remember coming home and telling my mom about the movie and how in the end, this guy’s face melted off. She got very angry that the teacher had shown us such a violent and scary movie, and after that, I was sent to the Art class when the teacher played movies.

All grown up now, the stupid cartoon duck movie still stands out in my head as scarier than Raiders of the Lost Ark. I still get an icky feeling when I think of the poor duck, and I still see how his eye turned to an X, he fell over, started bleeding, and died. I don’t remember the scene of the guy’s face melting off in Raiders of the Lost Ark. So my moral of this story is this: you cannot say for certain what is going to scare or scar your child.

You may have the best intentions in the world of protecting them from the scary stuff, but only your child knows what truly is scary to them. How many children are afraid of sitting on Santa Claus’ lap in the mall? Santa isn’t supposed to be scary, but to many children, he is. Fireworks on the fourth of July are not supposed to be scary, but to some children, they are. My parents certainly did not mean for me to be scared by the movie they played at church that night. Even though they tried to limit the scary things we saw, we still saw scary things. It’s inevitable.

I think it’s cruel to intentionally try and scare a child and then not provide any relief or security from the scary thing. I think that is wrong. Most children are resilient and if they become scared, if we show them they are safe, we can diffuse the scariness and the child will not be scarred for life. It’s when that sense of security is never granted that produces the scars. I think in some way, exposure to scary things in a safe and loving environment is actually healthy.