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Comment by photochemsyn | Hacker News Reader

For some reason I got my hands on George Orwell's "Animal Farm" at a very young age, as it looked like a kid's book. That's a fairly bleak book, for example when the pigs sell the draft horse to the glue factory, but only the goat (whose only friend is the horse) knows what's going on.

Watership Down is another good one, the character of the Black Rabbit of Inle (the Grim Reaper of rabbitkind) was memorable.

However I disagree with claims that these kind of works 'traumatize' young readers. It's just an introduction to life's realities - everyone has to die, nature is beautiful but also violent, and humans can be crueler to each other than any animal ever could. Kids aren't traumatized by reading, or by playing video games - if trauma occurs, it's due to things like war and poverty and neglect and abuse.

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I read the Animal Farm to my below K12 kids on one sitting and they were hooked.

Kids needs scary stories in a safe environment. This will help them process these thoughts and prepare them for the inevitable trauma they will face at some point in their life.

Animal Farm is also not a bleak read but also fun as you can do all the animal voices with their characteristic animal sounds.

Stories don't prepare kids for trauma, and I don't think there's any real evidence in support of that idea. I would wager a large sum that a child who has heard scary stories is not more likely to better handle, say, the loss of an immediate family member, than a child who has only heard happy stories about unicorns, rainbows, and friendly interactions.

Not commenting on whether you’re right or wrong, but that’s a bit of an apples and oranges comparison there - nearly to the point of arguing in bad faith.

A more apt comparison might be a story about urban war where the main character looses many immediate family members (and explores the grieving process against the backdrop of the war) - and how that would help a kid process the loss of an immediate family member.

Don't be afraid, they're wrong.

List a single shred of scientific evidence showing that kids who are exposed to stories with similar themes to traumatic events they experience in real life are more likely the have better outcomes. Be afraid to call someone wrong without more than just-so stories and anecdotes.

Do you have a source to claim the opposite?

Of course not. I'm simply saying that I'm very skeptical of the claim and would bet actual money that the opposite (or null result) was actually true.

You got too much time on your hands.

Please stop wasting other people's.

This is a form of McNamara's fallacy. In reality, the data you are looking for is impossible to obtain. In practice, causing traumatic events is obviously unethical. Then, even if you had a proper study, there would be so many confounding factors that basically any conclusion is worthless. For instance, listening to an e-book on the subway is obviously different than discussing your emotions and response to the book. From first principles, it seems rather intuitive that if you expose anyone to a story of a trauma and discuss possible coping mechanisms, then that person is better prepared to cope with that trauma. Of course, being exposed to the thought might be traumatic itself (a kid might come to the realization that their dog is actually going to die) but if they react so poorly to the thought, how would they have reacted to the actual event? Intuitively, much worse. I'm all for data driven decisions, but our shared human experience can be a tremendous guiding light for things that are difficult to quantify.

Exactly. If you have an intuitive and common-sense take (exposure to stories with difficult themes can help kids cope with similar things in real life) and an unintuitive contrarian take (they don't, so let the kids get blindsided), the onus is on the contrarian to "list a single shred of scientific evidence."

Sure, it would be great if everyone could offer "evidence" for every position, but that's obviously unrealistic and impractical.

It's not contrarian...there's simply no evidence either way, that's all I'm saying. For every anecdote you can come up with showing a kid doing well after hearing scary stories, I'll come up with another of a kid doing without without hearing them. That's it.

Except that's not it. We have a whole generation of adults that can't handle rejection, can't handle difficulty, need emotional support peacocks on planes... because they were taught (repeatedly told the story, a.k.a. narrative) that they were special and would always win if they felt good enough about themselves.

In other words, we told stories that specifically set them up for disillusionment and disorder. Telling stories has been the way one generation prepares the next since the telling of stories began.

Oral tradition, religious texts, myth, legend, fables, fairy tales... all of these had purposes beyond entertainment. Don't go in the woods by yourself, it's dangerous. Don't swim in that river, it's dangerous. Don't be mean to other people, because you don't want to live in that society. Don't lie, because people won't believe you when you need them to.

We've always told these kinds of stories... until recently. The kids that did get these kinds of stories built the modern world. The kinds of kids that aren't getting these kinds of stories are the ones going on shooting sprees or rioting because they didn't get that raise or someone was mean to them on social media.

We do have evidence, it just isn't organized into a formal longitudinal study for you. Here's the thing. It is possible for people to discuss an idea and even draw conclusions of efficacy without a longitudinal study.

Thank you.

That is a more apt response than I could muster and encapsulates my thoughts on the matter.

I feel like everywhere today we are beset with scientism. As if defending your own position is unnecessary as long as you can call into question the rigor of your opponent's. History has taught us well the value of myth

> It's not contrarian...there's simply no evidence either way, that's all I'm saying. For every anecdote...

This isn't dueling anecdotes, it is the application of common sense and reason. You're taking a contrarian position against that, and lack of evidence (if that is indeed the case) doesn't create an "anything goes" situation where that take is on even footing with what you're arguing against.

Eh, in psychology the default is "nothing ever happens ever". No one ever changes, no effect lasts, and nothing ever replicates. There are all sorts of "intuitive" results which utterly fail to replicate, so I'd be surprised if things are better when you can't do a real study even in principle. I suppose I might just be jaded from the replication crisis, but my expectation is that things mostly just kind of happen. It's why I left for the gentle shores of math, where things work exactly as much as any pure math can be said to work.

What you call "intuitive" I call "not at all obvious or even remotely expected". There's simply no evidence either way that can't be contradicted by opposing anecdotes. That's really all I'm saying. It's not related to The McNamara Fallacy at all, because there's no obvious observation that supports the initial notion. It simply isn't common sense, even if you want it to be.

I think you can prove his point to a degree if you take the dog example. Specifically when said child doesn't already own a dog.

They could use the knowledge to either not get into the situation entirely or to embrace the situation regardless.

The former will always result in less trauma over time. Unless I am missing something. The latter is open to debate.

Thinking like this is regards to past relationships, I have prevented a lot of self trauma through experience with trauma.

Your assertion is that reading or hearing about life experiences does not prepare a person for a similar life experience.

This is absurd on its face. I'm sorry I don't have a journal article to substantiate my claim.

Pretty obvious strawman. I'm saying I'm skeptical that kids who've been told scary stories actually handle real-life trauma better than kids who weren't told scary stories.

I don't know how much scientific is the references on this article [1], but it's a good read about the topic

[1] - http://web.archive.org/web/20190423155359/https://medium.com...

I don't know if there are any controlled studies, but there's plenty of informal evidence that naive people cope poorly with traumatic events. Resilience is a product (though admittedly not a guaranteed product) of experience.

Life experience, yes. Scary stories told to children...that's what I'm very skeptical of.

The story in full will contain pieces of information that would help a child avoid said trauma entirely.

Don't go into the random abandoned house alone.

I'm actually with you on this. I've been reading articles about the trauma the war and displacement are causing Ukrainian children. I remember one mentioning older kids who knew about war already (because of stories or TV) had practically the same behavioral symptoms as younger kids who didn't understand what was happening. And this came from psychologists assessing hundreds if not thousands of kids.

Unapologetically, no

Stories definitely do help kids and adults process trauma.

I'm not going to go searching for it because you can cherry pick anything off the internet, but it's well documented that scary stories in a safe space assist children with processing traumatic events.

It's not well documented. It is simply assumed by adults who likely don't know whether it's true or not.

Stories create plans and set expectations.

Take the "story" of "if we get separated at the mall, meet at the fountain and wait there until we all arrive."

That's a story. You can imagine how it goes.

1. Imagine getting lost. Oh no, oh dear, sweaty palms! But hey, I'm not actually lost. No need to panic. Ok, now what?

2. I should actively work to remember the path back to the fountain.

Now, when your five-year-old brain realizes you got separated from daddy, you're not FREAKING OUT you're backtracking to the fountain and thumb-twiddling.

Your turn - all you have to do is come up with an edge case ("I'm sure there are some kids that'd forget where the fountain was") and pretend that "some" is statistically more relevant than the idea that making a plan makes a positive difference.

I see that you are talking about exposure to negative stimuli (bad stories) having no demonstrable positive impact to individuals. Perhaps this helps: Psychology has examined the impact of lots of praise (the absence of negative stimuli - e.g not allowing criticism of others, getting a 14th place ribbon) on an individual, vs those that are given critical feedback (negative stimuli is provided and/or no positive stimuli is provided e.g no ribbon or “good job” for 14th place; being excluded from the running team due to poor performance etc) for at least the past 30 years. The overall conclusion of this research is that lots of praise is a problem, and fosters the development of narcissism and leads to poor outcomes when the individual experiences “real” results (e.g they got a high five for getting a “c grade” in high school, but in their workplace performance review they get a “meets expectations” and a verbal warning from their boss that if they don’t improve they will be put on a Performance Improvement Plan).

Lots of this research can be read if you look for the impact of developing high self-esteem in individuals (typically this is done as described above), and measuring the impact of these actions.

Example paper here: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1111/1529-1006.0143...

I was generally chasing the thought that reading to your kids is always good for them. Even scary stories, as long as they are don't cause too much anxiety.

By trauma I was not implying "the worst thing that can happen to a person" - just bad things in general which will happen anyway. From my personal experience strategies and coping mechanisms inspired by stories may provide true insights and help in formulating actionable strategies in novel situations. But I can't prove it as other pointed out.

My intent was not to claim terrifying stories will inoculate a person from terror, despair, loss or anguish.

I was a fat, stuttering early elementary kid, so I read a lot to avoid the cruel other kids. To the degree my 4th grade teacher would no longer allow me to do book reports for a grade using children's or teen books any longer. She pointed me at the literature classics and said only those were grade worthy at my reading skill.

The right there was on of the most instrumental decisions of my life.

By 5th grade I'd read the entire high school literature section. I joined an adult book readers club to better understand what I was reading. Even the adults in my club agreed an adult life is continual situational ignorance, misunderstood tragedy, betrayal by those close to you, and servitude to the powerful. I no longer believe adult life is quite so harsh, but that attitude prepared me far better than my peers. I've spent a good amount of time talking down people ready to quit everything. Thankfully, I can reference some fantastic hopeful passages, and they have not failed such situations yet.

Can you share some hopeful passages, or some recommendations on what to read? I could use a bit of positivity in my life this month.

Without your personal context, recommendations are difficult. If you like science fiction, check out "Stories of your Life" by Ted Chang; if you like historical strategies for success, check out "The 48 Laws of Power" by Robert Greene; if you like grand philosophical views of an entire life well lived and how to have one "The Glass Bead Game" by Hesse; if you're interested in extremely practical advice in how to be successful today read (believe it or not) Harvard Business Review - it is far more down to earth than should be possible. If you like cynical SciFi, read Philip K Dick's Valis trilogy - it's a failed 2nd coming of god, wreaked by modern brand marketing.

Have you read Klara and the Sun yet?

Not yet. It is ordered, I love Ishiguro's prose.

Thanks for giving some recommendations, these sound interesting.

haha, high-five. My parents read with us every night as a kid, and that got me going on my own. At the start of third grade I did a book report on a junior textbook about the allied air campaigns during ww2 and the teacher didn't really know what to do with that.

(I'm a smart guy but reading with my parents made a huge difference imo, it is probably the single biggest thing you can do to give your kids a head-start in life. Give your kids the ability to sponge up as much information as possible during those critical years of childhood brain plasticity!)

I've always been a sensitive person (until cruel kids taught me to hide it) and Watership Down and Where The Red Fern Grows got me bad as a kid... but not like lifelong trauma or anything, just baby's first exposure to death.

I'm curious what sort of books they would read. I like to read to our kids, but it's mostly books targeted at a bit above their reading level, not adult-level stuff.

(other readers: sorry, I know this post is going to be a bit obnoxiously long, but I didn't want to put it on a pastebin or some other external service and potentially have it disappear if someone wanted to reference it in the future. If you're not interested please feel free to collapse this!)

I actually asked my mom to compile a list of books she could remember, because a friend had kids and was getting to the age where they were starting to read too. Here's what she came up with (note, no particular order of difficulty or maturity here):

My Father’s dragon series

Where the sidewalk ends, Shel Silverstein

A pizza the size of the Sun

Choose your own adventure books

The Great Brain

The Boxcar Children series

Captain Underpants

Roald Dahl books: The BFG, James and the Giant Peach, Matilda, The Twits, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory/The Great Glass Elevator (not as good)

My Side of the Mountain

No More Dead Dogs

The Secret Garden

Bridge to Terabithia (Deals with death, a little older)

The Lion, the witch, and the wardrobe

Across five Aprils (civil war historical fiction, older)

The Broken Blade (Voyageur) & Sequel

Island of the blue dolphins

The witch of blackbird pond

Johnny Tremaine (a bit older)

The sign of the Beaver

Charlotte’s Web

Because of Winn Dixie

Tuck Everlasting (sad at end)

Ruby Holler

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

Treasure Island

The Pushcart War

Maniac Magee

Rascal

Frindle

Hatchet (Gary Paulsen)

Mr. Popper’s Penguins (young)

Tales of a 4th Grade Nothing (Juy Blume)

Pippi Longstocking

Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle (young)

A Wrinkle in Time

Moccasin Trail

Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH

From the Mixed Up files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler

The Egypt Game

The Phantom Tollbooth (young)

Holes (little older)

Sideways Stories from Wayside School (young)

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz

Homer Price (easy reading)

The Indian in the Cupboard

Misty of Chincoteague (series)

Aesop’s Fables (young)

The Eye, the Ear, and the Arm

Redwall series

Watership Down

(I'll throw in the Discworld series too for kids that are getting a bit older! It's probably very readable for, say, an advanced 5th grader. I was tearing through all the redwall books and the Golden Compass series at that point and Discworld is probably comparable. Golden Compass wasn't finished then and The Amber Spyglass ended up being kind of a disappointment. I know I was reading Discworld by 7th grade for sure.)

Small nitpick, cynical old Benjamin was a donkey not a goat.

“He would say that God had given him a tail to keep the flies off, but that he would sooner have had no tail and no flies.”

I wonder if there is a difference between oral stories and movies. My kids started to cry while watching the Little Dinosaur (ages 5 and under) several months ago. I recently bought a copy of the uncensored Brother Grim stories. Taking into account how sensitive they have been in the past with G rated cartoons, I decided I would edit the stories in real time (leaving out words like 'blood') and sometimes modify the ending slightly. Recently, I stopped editing the stories. My kids still love the stories and ask me to read them more right before bed time. They even asked me to re-read them Hansel and Gretel, which is quite a brutal tale in my opinion. Show them a single clip of a 'sad/scary' cartoon and they still freak out to this day; however.

I think there is something to be said about Disney cartoons use of music and visual images that sort of forces viewers into a certain emotional mindset. Oral stories/books on the other hand leave it up to the imagination of the listener to conger up the emotions and images. Not sure if this makes sense, but at least in the case of my kids it does.

Yep read animal farm in middle school and it was dope. (Along with Brave New World + Naked lunch which IMO is a bit racier)

One of my favorite things about the internet when I was younger was that it let me find books I couldn't get without begging my parents haha.

Adults really underestimate how resilient kids are, and how much media isn't able to approximate the real world (yet). Modern ppl really don't realize how dark lots of older child stories are, like the brother's grimm etc, and that kids used to be taken to executions.

EDIT: over -> under.

I think you mean they underestimate how resilient kids are.

Fixed thanks :)

Quite a lot of adult mental illness can be attributed to being overly sheltered as a child… your brain wires itself to expect the environment it grew up in and when the adult world is substantially different the result is often mental illness.

> However I disagree with claims that these kind of works 'traumatize' young readers.

Yes, the trauma occurs when you realise how misled you were about the nature of reality, that you were sold a lie.

I'm still traumatized by animal farm.

I once asked my dad why people who committed treason against the king in medieval times were treated so cruelly.

He said that live was nasty, brutish and short in those days, and to make an impact and a deterrence the king had to be over the top cruel.

I don't know how true that is, as I suspect there's a large element of people just liking to be cruel if they have the opportunity.

I have a couple books on the cruelties done by armies in WW2, and in the American west, and could not finish reading them.

I remember watching the Watership Down film as a young child and being rather disturbed. I think it set me up well for watching Nightmare on Elm Street when I was about 9 though.

However, I've turned into a fairly well rounded individual (I don't try to murder rabbits or children in their dreams at least). The only downside is that I don't find horror films or rabbits particularly interesting.

Something recently made me think of Moses the raven though.

This is only true if the young ones in question are in a psychologically safe and emotionally supportive environment.

I read things as a young child, without having the support to talk and parse them out, and additionally on top of the chaotic environment I was already in, where reading things like Animal Farm, or, specifically in my case, being introduced to the concept of destructive extinction events in books, movies, and magazines caused much trauma. I had a year where I didn't sleep well, until I could finally convince myself that aliens weren't going to get me in the shower, and that a giant meteor wasn't going to collide with earth any time soon (yet, at least).

I was 11 when I read All Quiet on the Western Front and maybe 13 when I read Innocent Erendira. I don’t remember talking to anyone about these, though I did feel terrible for a few days after. Honestly, no lasting effects.

This is probably the same as the fact that 70% of soldiers experiencing combat stress do not get PTSD and 30% experiencing severe combat stress don’t either. This means human variability is significant.

So it’s a question of whether you want to roll the dice. I think I’ll want to permit the autonomy for my children but it’s entirely possible they’ll be in the susceptible set and be damaged.

Do you have any evidence that there is a susceptible set? Books especially fiction come with two fundamental safety features. Firstly the book never subjects itself upon its reader. The reader is always in absolute control. Secondly the fundamental unreality of the setting allows one to dismiss it.

I recall observing with morbid curiosity a video of someone losing their life to a terrorist many years ago thinking it would be no different than a gory movie. I was very very wrong. It isn't the realism of the simulation that matters its the inability to dismiss what one knows is in fact real.

I have no evidence that there is a susceptible set. That's a "maybe you're right" statement.

I remember clearly as a kid scrubbing my head furiously for weeks after a local spelunking adventure where the guide jokingly told me that, after a stalactite dripped on me repeatedly, that a stalagmite would grow from my head.

As a kid with a lot of anxieties (nuclear holocaust, overpopulation, etc) I really didn't need to be growing stalagmites from my head.

Up to about seven years old, kids take things very literally. Understanding metaphorical speech comes only after that period, and not everyone fully understands even as an adult.

As a kid I watched the film a bunch. It was scary but I liked it. Worth checking out. Amazing that it's from 1954 https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0047834/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0

Should also lump in Metamorphosis into this category of bleak but fascinating stories.

Reminds me of all the adults freaking out about kids being traumatized by wearing masks. Kids don’t care. For them it was like putting on pants. Not a big deal unless the adults around them make it into a big deal.

Another one might be "Lord of the Flies", it really has spine chilling moments.

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