Are superheroes dangerous? To the world? That depends on which side they are. And to my children?
I had quite strong principles throughout my whole life, even though they might have seemed too conservative or harsh… The situation was the same concerning my thoughts towards raising children as well. Then my children were born, and my principles, expectations… well they have changed, better said: they adapted to the environment. The more children I had, the more they adapted.
One of my pretty strong thoughts was that I will keep my children away from the television and the diverse selection of animated action movies as long as I can. The superheroes with special power, saving the world – while destroying everything – seemed especially repugnant. We had no problem with this as BigBoy was not at all interested in these fantasy knights, and did not engage BigGirl either, she was born to be a girl after all.
After a while, I happened to meet these superheroes every once in a while, at a carnival or a birthday party which were organised in these topics. BigGirl still did not show any sign of interest, but the desire to own a Batman/Superman figure had awoken in BigBoy. I resisted and did not buy him any which he resented, but since his fandom was shallow, he forgot it quite soon.
Time passed on, more and more superhero movies arrived at the cinemas and it was harder and harder to keep us away of the effect of this. Firstly, because there were some really well made ones, which even I liked and I can tell my children that they mustn’t watch these movies, but that unfortunately won’t have even the slightest effect on the movie habits of others. With MiddleOne and Fourth attending kindergarten a new era of uncountable requests for superheroes has started. (Big Boy and Big Girl did not take part in this, they had grown out of this age by then, or have never even been in it.)
And I still resisted. But Fourth stood by his point of view so strongly (like a leader ant in the colony) that cracks started to show up on the wall of my heart-bastion. When one year – with the use of his chocolate resource – he got BigGirl to write a letter to the Angel, to get him a plush Spiderman, I really was touched. With this step, Fourth forced me to think the matter over: are superheroes really so devastatingly bad to my descendants or are they smart enough to handle the topic as it should be handled.
Husband was of big help to me in this topic, according to whom I am the one who always says that children are not “dumb”, they are only children.
And then just added: if that is true, why do I degrade them in this matter? After all of this I came to the conclusion that even though I still do not like this world, if I speak about this with Four (that these are only tales, there are no people with supernatural powers, if you throw a stone at someone, that hurts and if we do not agree with someone, tying them up with web might not be the perfect way of showing that), then there’s nothing bad in him getting a Spiderman themed game, plush. With this, the idea has again been proved to me, that children can also understand the worlds happenings if they are told to them on their levels. You should not look for danger on every corner, the example of a parent is much stronger than impact from the outside, even though sometimes it might be hard to believe this. So that’s how I share our flat with a plush Spiderman figure, with a superhero pillow and sheets and of course with one or two spiderman legos and I can surely tell you that I have never in my life been more safe.