In recent years, stories have evolved a lot.
Thus, the traditional editions of the Brothers Grimm in which fully defined antagonists appeared: good and bad, have been postponed to the highest shelves of bookstores and instead modern drawings of stories with characters that can be children, animals, loving monsters, etc..
There is a lot to choose from, in addition, lately stories that help children to manage emotions. In them, a constant is repeated, and that is that modern characters are ethically normal. They are neither good nor bad, they are characters that are sad sometimes, or misbehave, but they are absolutely normal.
It is very positive that children, from a very young age, internalize that people, in most cases, are neither good nor bad, and that sometimes we behave well and sometimes not so well.
But I miss something. And, in real life, there are also people who are not good. Unfortunately there are individuals who, to satisfy a personal desire, harm children or other people. The character of "The bad guy" in the stories is a good way for the little ones to get to know the concept of "bad person" and to be able, in addition, to confront those kinds of personalities when the time comes (if we don't know , I will not be able to face it well).
I have learned this new way of interpreting traditional stories, as a way to confront the "bad guys", with Monserrat Morán, author of the collection "A whole world of sensations" and above all a great professional in working with children.
Since I have known her, I have replaced my old tales of the three little pigs, in which in the end, the wolf and the three little pigs end up making friends, with this other one, which ends with these sentences:
"Ploff! The Wolf fell into a cauldron of boiling water at the end of the fireplace. The pigs' food was ready! From that day on, the three little pigs lived happily and safely in their sturdy brick house. " The three little pigs, Editorial Combel.
That is to say, from the classic version of the stories in which all the characters were good or bad to the modern one in which they are all neutral there is a middle point: I would not completely banish the bad character who can help the child to express and exorcise certain emotions that he does not know how to channel.
In our school, we have chosen to develop this idea. So, after telling the story, I leave the character of the wolf, so that they can express themselves as they feel. Everything is fine: they can throw him up, hit him, step on him, run him over, we are giving them the opportunity to do justice for others, and in case of need, to act symbolically against the bad guys.
Why is it important that children have the opportunity to deal in a practical way with situations that can harm them?
I'm going to show it with an example. Imagine a situation at work, in which a colleague or your own boss ridicules you or does something to you that feels really bad. When you get home, you tell your partner or a friend about it and you receive a response similar to this: "If it happened to me, I would have told him ..., come on, I won't stay silent".
This situation is very common, your partner, or whoever is talking to you, does it from the neutrality that the absence of involvement supposes, from their rational brain. But that is not the part of the brain that you were using when you faced the situation with your boss.
When we feel threatened or pressured, our response automatically reptilian brain, the most primitive part of the brain, which has a very important function: to survive. And this means that in those situations we do not make decisions from a rational point of view, considering various options ... no. We only have three response possibilities with this brain: flee, get blocked or attack. In work situations, it is seldom attacked ...
It is positive to confront children with situations from the rational brain, in a neutral situation, so that, if at any moment they feel pressured, they can react by attacking or fleeing. They can also practice in shopping centers: they can be taught who to go to if they get lost or they can practice with dolls how to respond to a child who insults them.
Returning to the story that concerns us, what we did was to photocopy in color a page in which the wolf with a bad face appeared and make several copies. Then we cut it out and laminate it like this:
This is one way, you can also photocopy the pigs, and distribute characters asking them who they want to be: pigs or wolves (good or bad). Do not be surprised if he wants to switch roles and goes from putting a fierce and serious voice to a sharp one, it is normal.
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