Remember when we used to sit around campfires telling each other scary stories, or maybe some not so scary stories. Well Jell-o does and they demonstrate it here.
What i would like to point out is the children's reaction to the story...they are scared out of their mind, but they give their treats back. Jell-o is currently airing another commercial similar to this. The mother is telling her children a fairytale about a princess who gets locked away in a dark cave with snakes for the rest of eternity. She then adds the moral "and that's why you don't steal mommies jell-o temptations." The children immediately give the jell-o back. (video not available)
Now i know what your thinking...why is this person going on about jell-o. Well in an essay I read recently Bruno Bettleheim comments on how parents think stories are should only show the good in life and never the bad. As much as children don't need to be overexposed to the violent world we live in, they do need to know some of the bad. Life is not all milk and cookies. In many original fairy tales, the main protagonist must overcome many hardships, or in the case of some will not survive at all. In other stories, someone else swoops in and saves the day. But this isn't how life works. By reading children these type of fairy tales, we are teaching them that the someone else will always be there to clean up their messes.
Fairy tales are a fun, simple way to teach your children certain messages. Not all messages may be happy, but they are necessary. "Little Red Riding Hood" teaches kids not to talk to strangers, particularly in the version by Charles Perrault where Little Red Riding Hood does not survive at all. Sometimes we must scare our children to make the message go through. Fear is a necessary emotion and we can't shelter the world's children from it.
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