The mummy returns
It’s half-term week for schools in the south of England and London’s Underground was packed today with grandparents and parents roving the capital on a quest for activities to divert their children.
The national Bahá’í Centre is situated close to the Natural History Museum – always a hardy perennial with those kids who for some reason like to be scared out of their wits by the very realistic animatronic figure of Tyrannosaurus Rex. But my tube journey also takes in Holborn, the train stop for the British Museum.
This morning I was amused to overhear the following conversation between a bright young boy and a woman who I assumed was his grandmother.
“Are there skeletons in the museum?” the boy asked, a fearful expression on his brow.
“Well there are Egyptian mummies which have skeletons in them…” Grandma smilingly replied.
Trepidation crossed the lad’s face. “I’m scared! What if they come alive?”
“They won’t come alive,” she replied calmly. “Skeletons can’t come alive. They’ve been dead for centuries. That’s why they are in a museum.”
“Some skeletons can come alive,” said the boy. “I’ve seen them.”
Grandma had an answer for everything. “That’s only on television”
“Yes, but what if they come out of the television?” he asked.
There was a certain logic to his line of thinking.
I remember as a child being very fearful of just about everything. At that time there had been a spate of high-profile kidnappings that I had overheard on the news. Someone calling himself the Black Panther had abducted a 17-year old heiress and demanded £50,000 ransom money. I was convinced for some reason that I was going to be kidnapped too. It didn’t help that a rumour swept round the children in our junior school that the Black Panther had been seen at the local swimming pool the night before.
Now when I think about it, why would Britain’s most wanted criminal be taking a quick dip in the Canterbury municipal baths? And, come to think of it, how would anyone know it was him? Did he have Black Panther emblazoned on his Speedos?
But for a child with an imagination such as mine, reasoning doesn’t help. Even my parents flippantly saying, “Don’t be stupid. We haven’t got any money” failed to assuage my paranoia of being kidnapped. Every time we travelled anywhere and a car was following us for any reasonable period, I would duck down out of sight on the backseat convinced that I was being pursued by someone who was out to get me. I wouldn’t sleep in the bedroom at the front of the house because a ladder could easily be propped up to reach the window.
Even today, when there are so many more frightening things bombarding young minds and kids are much more savvy, a child’s imagination is extremely vulnerable. The other day a friend of mine’s four year old daughter came home in tears from a birthday party at which the parents had stuck on a video of Indiana Jones. I don’t know which episode in the series it was but there’s not a lot of difference when you are four years old between melting Nazis, voodoo priests, or resuscitated skeletal aliens. They are all terrifying and, for a youngster unaware of the craft of special effects, all real. How could they be otherwise?
I am not sure what the answer is. I suppose bedtime fear has been and will always be part of growing up. Children, I guess, need to be helped not to give energy to their imaginings. A looming creature on the wall may be nothing more than the shadow of a tree outside the window. But when a child invests energy in the imagined danger, it takes on a whole new, potentially threatening life.
I suspect praying with children before bedtime can help redirect energy. ”In a time to come,” predicted ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, “morals will degenerate to an extreme degree. It is essential that children be reared in the Bahá’í way, that they may find happiness both in this world and the next. If not, they shall be beset by sorrows and troubles, for human happiness is founded upon spiritual behaviour.”
That would seem to be a good measuring rod for what we choose to do with our children not just at half-term but all year round. But when will the museum of spiritual behaviour and positive thinking be opening? And what would they put on display?
Filed under: Thoughts | 5 Comments
Tags: British Museum, children, kidnapping, mummy
Hmm I’m not convinced helping children avoid giving energy to their imaginings is really the best approach. Imagining things is such a magical wonderful part of being a child, and a major part of being creative. Unfortunatly as we go through school and grow up in society most of us are educated out of creativity.
Redirecting energies away from imagining, sounds a lot like a piece of the anti creativity problem.
Hows about the complete opposite. Encourage their imaginings! Help them paper mache a monster to live in the cupboard, or under the bed to battle the demons that might come out and get them while they sleep. Help them make puppets of zombies to bring some life into them, and encourage them to come up with elaborate stories about their creations and how they protect you, upholding justice, honour, mercy and other good qualities.
I’m trying really hard to think of things I was afraid of… as a kid… and all I’m remember is making all sorts of stuff out of lego, paper/cardboard, glue and paint etc. I seem to always have known how to determine what’s real and whats not… Yet I was spending hours playing computer games from the age of 4. Living the classic life thats stereotyped as the makings of someone who cant tell the difference between fiction and reality. Slightly later on in life I used to read tons of books, imersing myself in fiction. I remember feeling as if I was there, in the game, or in the book, living the story. But I always knew what was real and what wasn’t.
I remember sneaking through to the living room to watch tv in the middle of the night, where I watched dr giggles, a terrible horror film that scared the pants of my 8(ish) year old self. even in the weeks after I would feel a bit scared remembering the scenes, and the feelings I’d conjured up by letting myself live the film. But the imaginings never broke into reality. I never developed fears of key holes (dr giggles injects something into someone through a keyhole which made them spew up their intestines), or carnivals, or anything else… It was scary because I imagined being there, but the whole scinario stayed in this big box labeled “imagination”, that I always knew was seperate from reality, no matter how much I might try to merge the two. And believe me I definantly tried to…
I dont think my imaginings ever caused me to be afraid of something real. The only thing close to a fear I have now is, worrying how I would react when faced directly with injust and inhumane treatment of one human to another. Which is a grown up fear if its a fear at all. -I know that if Im faced with any situation its because somewhere deep down I have the strength to deal with it- I have a pretty good feeling my lack of fear is because I was always immersed in my imagination, and developing it somehow. Whether playing with crafts, modding computer games, building tree houses, writing stories or whatever it was, at any period of my childhood, I was engaged in turning thoughts into my head into realization.
Perhaps there’s less reason to be afraid of monsters if you’ve made some yourself. Hang on a minute, its just paper and glue… whats to be afraid of?
Or if your too young to think so logically, use your imagination to conjure up heroes to protect you.
I’d be really interested to hear more on what everyone thinks about this…
wow… that ended up being rather long… Perhaps I should of just blogged about the subject myself and left a short comment saying a little and that I’ve said more on my blog. Long comments are soo… weighty and unelegant.
We occasionally take our children to movies with the most convincing special effects, but they’re not fooled into thinking that’s real. Indeed, it’s the real stuff that can get scary. I cannot honestly tell my 7yearold daughter that its completely impossible that somebody breaks into our house when she tells me she can’t sleep because she’s afraid that might just happen. It doesn’t help when I tell her the chances are quite low. I do tell her that but also add that whatever happens and wherever we (her parents) are she will not be alone. The possibility of prayer is offered and welcomed. Imagination, I feel, cannot be suppressed really and just saying it’s nonsense doesn’t accomplish much. Imagination is part of reality, perhaps in ways we haven’t yet figured out. It can be fun to explore that with my kids.
i love this post Rob!
I do agree that channelling that energy into praying is a good way of dealing with those irrational fears…. however, like the language used in the early religions, symbolism and stories and characters are very appealing ways to package a message, or convey a concept to a child as it was to people of ancient civilisations…
I think the idea of a paedophile or abducter of children might a concept that a child may not be ready to hear due to their limited capacity to understand. The boogie-man apparition of the Black Panther might do a better job…especially if it makes children less likely to walk home alone etc.
However, if I ever heard of the ‘Black Panther’ as a child, I’d be drawn to him (due the name), simply because it would conjure images of Big Afros, funk/soul music, berets, and revolutionary coolness….. but that’s just me…
I think this should be explored more thoroughly….Breezes of Confirmation and all the other JY books do a great job of this.
I think ‘story-telling’ is also something that is not only not done enough, but also has merit for adults as well as children, albeit as a compliment to the bare facts….