How Do Fairy Tales Affect The Development Of Children

The enchantment of fairy tales have been present throughout history because of the passing and retelling of the stories from past generations. Astounding to many, different versions of popular fairy tales most readers have grown up hearing such as, Little Red Riding Hood and Cinderella, have been reinterpreted in various cultures since they first originated. Many assume that the exclusive purpose of fairy tales is for entertainment, however, there is a moral teaching behind every tale that is written, whether it being directly or indirectly stated for the reader to comprehensively understand. At a young age, fairy tales play a prominent role in the construction of identities and the cognitive development of children because these tales are the

Fairy tales provide the assistance for children on how to deal with conflicts they will experience in their lives. Therefore, the continuous and repetitious narratives found in fairy tales have a fundamental purpose of constructing a reader’s identity and cognitive development. Although fairy tales are commonly acknowledged of being the sole purpose for entertainment, these tales provide aid towards a child’s growth and understanding on how to cope with inevitable conflicts in life. At a young age, children are not aware of the tragic and inevitable events they will eventually experience in the duration of their lifetimes. However, through the utilization of fairy tales, children are exposed to the tales and are unconsciously learning a lesson or moral that they will encounter later in life. In Bettelheim’s Fairy Tales and the Existential Predicament, he explores this notion of how a child will be confronted by an inevitable situation some point in the life, “This is exactly the message that fairy tales get across to the child in manifold form: that a struggle against severe difficulties in life is unavoidable, is an intrinsic part of human existence … one