The controversy of the trailer for ‘Never turn off the light’ and the fear in children, what can parents do?
Many parents have publicly supported the complaint of a woman who asked that the trailer for ‘Never turn off the light’ should not be broadcast, as it has caused her daughter to not sleep well at night.
This week, a petition from a mother became popular on the internet who complained that a trailer for a horror movie that had been broadcast on television had frightened her 3-year-old daughter in a worrying way . The movie is ‘ Never turn off the light ‘. The mother asked the Antena 3 network that, since clearly they were not going to remove the trailer of the film from the broadcast, they warned of the recommended age to see it before broadcasting them during the advertising space and that it was the parents who decided if their children may or may not see it. What happened is that, when they were taken by surprise, the girl saw this excerpt from the film and is now very afraid of being alone in different parts of her house, and that at night this feeling worsens.
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WHY ARE CHILDREN AFRAID?
Children are afraid of the dark because we adults transmit it to them in some way. Simply by the fact that in the dark you do not know what to expect, for example, tripping over a piece of furniture, makes us reject it. But that fear of monsters , ghosts or the bogeyman, they learn from what they see on television or in the reactions of adults. That, and that it is not transmitted to them that darkness is as safe as light (except for the issue of tripping over the furniture). This is what is called vicarious learning: learning by example . Those fears, if we don’t address them, persist into adulthood and are passed back to children.. And a very important factor for them to eat is, of course, other children. They may hear stories at school that at night their classmate heard noises and was scared, or that he saw a shadow or a ghost , and our sons and daughters are easy to believe it, because those children don’t have to be lying either. : If you think you have seen it, you have seen it.
So scary movies, although we know they are fiction and we tell children, show scenes with a very strong emotional charge (fear, a primary emotion), because what they seek is to impact: to cause that fear that makes you jump out of the chair. And if adults get scared, even if we know it’s a lie, the same thing happens to children. At night they will remember that scene because it has shocked them and then they pay much more attention to signs that it is normal for us to see at that time of day: a shadow of a car passing under our window, a creaking piece of furniture, a neighbor giving a hit … etc. They are sounds that are in our home throughout the day, but at night, with silence and the lack of stimuli that distract us, they become more evident.
So the fears in children come from their interaction with the world (adults, other children, television, the stimuli around them, etc.), and with that same mechanism they can leave . Normally, adults who remember being afraid of the dark or other similar situations as children, have gradually become accustomed to dealing with it. As the nights passed they saw that there were no monsters or ghosts, they have been forgetting about it and have learned to sleep peacefully . However, it depends on how they interpret it. Perhaps one day they have seen a shadow and have become obsessed with it, there they may need external help and to be taught some guidelines to face the situation .
WHAT CAN WE PARENTS DO?
The best thing we parents can do to combat this situation is to gradually accustom them to the dark. One surefire trick is to play with them in the dark. If they are in the middle of a time of great fear, we can lie with them in bed and talk about funny and funny things, or play riddles or shadow figures. We can also invent tricks to “scare away” fear . It is better to try to drive away the emotion than to the monsters themselves, because what we want is that you do not believe in them, although if necessary, we can resort to small rites or phrases that drive the “creatures” away. There are parents who turn to religion, we can also make it a game. Think of a rhyming phrase and tell him to repeat them 3 times. But we must make sure that it is not a behavior that they repeat all their lives, so if one night they manage to sleep without saying the magic words, we will praise their courage to gradually eliminate that need.
If they are not very afraid, or have been advancing, we can take advantage of the summer to organize night activities , for example a camping trip, or go to our town and spend a while in the street at night, etc. Or even host a great nighttime hide and seek game at home.
What is good for us to do is to avoid that as children they see those movies or those scenes. It’s easy to bring fears back just by watching a movie. It is not that children are especially impressionable, it is that they are films created to generate an emotional reaction of very strong fear , and there are adults who also relive their fear of the dark because of them. So if you think that the trailers on television are harming your son or daughter, you have every right to ask that they be put in another band and advised of the recommended age .
BE CAREFUL WITH THE FEARS THAT YOU TRANSMIT TO YOUR SONS OR DAUGHTERS
What we must try is to prevent these fears since our sons and daughters are very young. Thus, we can tell (or invent) stories that take place at night or in the dark so that not only day and light are associated with the positive . We will play at night with them from time to time so that they learn to have pleasant emotions in that environment and, above all, we must be very careful with the fears that we transmit to them. A little behavior that we don’t even notice , like giving the light every time they enter a room, or saying “uh, how scary” at night, for children they have a great influence.
Dr. Tabriella Perivolaris, Sara's mother and fan of fashion, beauty, motherhood, among others, about the female universe. Since 2018 she has been working as a copywriter, always bringing to her articles a little of her experience and experience as a mother and woman.