#52Ancestors, Week 44, Frightening

What is frightening ? For me, rats and mice are terrifying. Snakes too, but more because they are not something I grew up with. Spiders, meh ! I can deal with them, mostly.

For other people it is the opposite, or heights, or confined spaces...did I ever tell you how much I hate being in a cave or underground ? Long tunnels freak me out just a bit too, if I let myself think about where I am.

For our pioneering ancestors the strange sounds and sight of wildlife in their new home countries must have been pretty scary at first. Machinery and contraptions like cars, must have been incomprehensible although there were likely many of our forebears who feared more simple things, horses, water, fire for whatever reason.

I came across this article from 1899 on Trove. (I have transcribed it below as it is a little tricky to read.) Articles like this seemed to be regularly appearing in papers across Australia, and no doubt in other countries as well. The message is clear about the damage which needless “frightening” can have long term on anyone, but especially for children. 

  

Albury Banner and Wodonga Express Friday 28 April 1899 page 10 www.trove.nla.gov.au,

Accessed 11 November 2018.

Frightening Children

Nothing can be worse for a child than to be frightened.   The effect of the scare it is slow to recover from; it remains sometimes until maturity, as is shown by many instances of morbid sensitiveness and excessive nervous ness.   Not unfrequently fear is employed as a means of discipline.   Children are controlled by being made to believe that something terrible will happen to them, and punished by being shut up in dark rooms, or by being put in places they stand in dread of.   No one without vivid memory of his childhood can comprehend how entirely cruel such things are.   We have often heard grown persons tell of the suffering they have endured, as children, under like circumstances,   and recount the irreparable injury which they are sure they then received. No parent, no nurse, capable of alarming the young is fitted for her position. Children, as near as possible, should be trained not to know the sense of fear, which, above every- thing else, is to be feared in their education, early or late.   Some interesting facts dealing with the fears of children have been collected by a well-known professor.   He has found: that 1701 were afraid of 6456 things.   The leading fears were lightning and thunder,  reptiles, strangers, the dark, death, domestic animals, water, ghosts, insects, rats, and mice  and high words.   Some of the fears were the results of personal experiences ; that is, in a district  where a great wind had wrought a havoc the children were afraid of it. In other cases the analysis showed by what means: parents had worked upon the imagination of their children.   In one district 16 poor little ones were dreading the end of the world.   The most gratifying fact of all was that not one child had been frightened into obedience or good conduct by the fear of the devil.   A century or two ago that fear would have led all the rest.   The pleasing inference is that parents now dwell upon affection and love to insure the goodness of their children, instead of terrorising them with Satan’s wrath.