What Scares My Kid More Than Anything?

2/17/2019

Raising young children inevitably involves a phase or phases during which parents do their best to comfort their kids about the monsters under the bed, the ghosts in the closet, and the things that go bump in the night. Delicate attempts are made to convince young sons and daughters of the unreality of these things, followed by explanations that assure the monster under the bed is just a pair of slippers; the closet ghosts, merely hanging clothes; and the bump in the night, simply the furnace clicking on. When children are very young, parents also strive to shield them from disturbing images and scenes on television and the internet. If our kids happen to inadvertently catch a glimpse of Freddy Krueger or Godzilla, we, as parents, tell them about actors and masks and computer animation in the hope that this dissolves some of the shock.

Fortunately, bogeymen and night monsters have never really frightened my son. In fact, I cannot recall a single instance where I had to console him regarding these things. Though my boy seems immune to the conventional creatures that terrify children, he is not immune to fear. So what scares my seven-year-old these days? Colliding galaxies, that’s what.

While other parents rush to switch the television channel or close a web browser after some scary monster or violent scene inadvertently appears on the screen, I feel the urge to jump out of my chair every time an astronomy or space program comes on. My son’s fascination with space-related themes began innocently enough with cartoon songs about the sun and the solar system, but after he turned four, he moved up to watching full-length documentaries about space and the universe. I know for certain he did not understand the content of these shows, but he seemed to find the visuals engaging, so I let him watch them with me whenever they happen to pop up on T.V. or online.

After my son turned five, I noticed he was beginning to comprehend the content of these documentaries. One day we watched a program about asteroids and meteor collisions. My son spent the next two months asking about the possibility of a meteor obliterating Earth, and whenever he stepped out of the house, I noticed he cast apprehensive glances up at the sky.

Following the viewing of a program describing black holes, my son became convinced one would materialize in the corner of his bedroom and suck him over its event horizon where he would then be ruthlessly spaghettified. Recently, we happen to view a program that focused on the eventual collision of the Milky Way and Andromeda Galaxies 3.75 billion years from now. His reaction to this news was one of defiant disbelief and existential indignation. “That will never happen,” he still grumbles occasionally whenever he ponders the matter. Inevitably, he looks at me and adds, “Why would God let that happen?”

I must admit, coming up with reassuring and meaningful answers to some of his questions regarding the mysteries of the universe stretches my cognitive abilities to their absolute limits. Sadly, I have learned that lightly dismissing my son's concerns by citing the time frame involved in events like galaxy collisions does little to assuage him, and I am left scrambling to find answers for things that are, quite frankly, beyond my own limited scope of comprehension.

I am almost certain my son’s current fixation on planetary collisions, supernovas, black holes, asteroid impacts, and wormholes is merely a phase. If not, I comfort myself with the notion that I may have a budding astrophysicist in the house. Regardless, I must confess there are moments I wish some imaginary monster did lurk under my son's bed. That sort of thing would be much simpler to address than the stellar phenomena that strike wonder, dread, and awe in him now.

8 Comments

Bruce Charlton

2/17/2019 17:09:52

Great observational stuff.

I read in GK Chesterton something to the effect that when children are scared of monsters, they don't need to be told that monsters don't exist - because they can see monsters. Instead they need to know that the monsters can be killed (and preferably how).

Anyway, my grown up son told me that when he was small (?4) he was very afraid of monsters at night; and when he told me this, apparently I discussed how best he should arm himself to defeat them.

We considered various guns and swords, but he chose a sidearm baton from a dress-up police outfit - it was about five inches long and made of soft hollow plastic. Anyway, he slept with this truncheon ready to hand - and was never troubled by the monsters any more.

Francis Berger

2/17/2019 19:08:19

Chesterton's advice makes a great deal of sense, and based on your experience with your son, it seems effective, too! (That plastic truncheon bit is priceless!)

Thank goodness I didn't have to deal with the monster issues - I might have flubbed it. I based what I wrote in the post on observations of other parents. Seems like reading some Chesterton on the issue might do them some good.

But come to think of it, I may have unconsciously employed a similar line of thinking concerning my son's cosmic fears. I do recall telling him not to worry about the asteroids, for example, and went on to describe an elaborate missile defense mechanism the world had put in place for such an event.

Then I told him we could hit any meteors that managed to make it through back into space with baseball bats. That seemed to put the meteor issue to rest.

Galaxy collision has been a tougher nut to crack, but I should definitely try a similar approach.

These shows he sometimes watches are geared to mainstream audiences and tend to be quite sensationalistic - full of "what if" questions. This is what my boy essentially gleans from them. He's a bright kid, but he is still too young to really understand anything beyond the surface when it comes to astronomy.

In any event, it is truly a blessing to have the chance to observe how a child's imagination and consciousness develop over time.

William James Tychonievich link

2/19/2019 08:35:21

Whitley Strieber (the horror novelist and occultist, now known chiefly as America's alien abductee laureate) also describes in one of his books how as a very young child he was both fascinated and terrified by the idea of colliding galaxies, as also by the prospect of the moon one day blowing up.

I myself worried a lot about meteors as a child. Every time I saw a shooting star when away from home (which is when one generally does see them), I was very anxious to get back home and ascertain that it had not hit and destroyed our house.

2/19/2019 19:40:33

It's good to know my son is not the first little boy in the world to feel discomfited by the sight of falling stars.

Epimetheus

2/19/2019 17:25:24

If it's any consolation, galaxies pretty much can't collide - the space between stars is so vast it's statistically impossible that there would be any physical collisions whatsoever.

In all likelihood, two "colliding" galaxies will go through each other without physically touching, gravitationally grab ahold of each other, and swing round and round into a new mega spiral-galaxy, all of the stars and planets perfectly intact.

It wouldn't be catastrophic, but graceful, like a ballet of mathematics, like the merging of two whirling groups of dancers.

The night sky would only get much brighter and more beautiful, and we'd have to invent new constellations.

This scenario is played out in John C. Wright's novel Count to Infinity, if I recall correctly.

The Earth and Solar System are also protected by powerful electromagnetic "force-fields" we only barely understand.

The Earth's atmosphere defeats thousands of rocks per day.

Also, the vast gravity of the sun acts as a huge magnet to pull threats away from Earth. They go into the sun and are harmlessly absorbed. The Sun is like Earth's big brother - 109 times bigger in diameter, 330,000 times heavier, and 1.3 million times greater in volume. This is not to mention the huge outward planets like Jupiter and Saturn.

Space is unimaginally huge and empty, filled mostly with light.

There's a lot of protection on our side.

2/19/2019 17:45:10

Also check: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andromeda–Milky_Way_collision

"While the Andromeda Galaxy contains about 1 trillion (1012) stars and the Milky Way contains about 300 billion (3×1011), the chance of even two stars colliding is negligible because of the huge distances between the stars."

"The galaxy product of the collision has been nicknamed Milkomeda or Milkdromeda.[16] According to simulations, this object will look like a giant elliptical galaxy, but with a centre showing less stellar density than current elliptical galaxies.[13] It is, however, possible the resulting object will be a large disk galaxy, depending on the amount of remaining gas in the Milky Way and Andromeda.[17]"

Of course, this same article says that our Sun will have brightened already and turned Earth into a hellscape, but let's look at the bright side of life!

But who knows that, really? Kinetic calculations are one thing - estimating the Sun's luminosity in four billion years is another.

2/19/2019 19:43:33

@ Epimetheus

You, sir, will be my go to source for any future advice/information regarding the universe. I will make a point of telling my little boy most of what you have written here. I am certain he will find it both fascinating and reassuring.

Arakawa

2/19/2019 18:00:35

It's interesting that some of the consistently-child-popular topics are dinosaurs and space -- the children like them because they are cool, the media like to make stories about them because (presented a certain way) they suggest a dead, empty cosmos devoid of meaning.

I solved the dread-of-galaxies issue when I was eight by taking a bubble bath, creating some galaxies from the dwindling bubbles and then colliding them with each other.

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