Sarah Coyne saw Alfred Hitchcock’s “The Birds” nearly 30 years ago as a child, and she credits the film with giving her what she calls her “irrational fear” of birds: She screams and quickly leaves if one flies too close to her.
From monsters under the bed and skeletons to large animals and thunderstorms, it can be difficult to predict what might scare a child, making it challenging for parents to select Halloween films the whole family can watch together.
“Parents really need to be careful about what they’re letting their children watch,” said Coyne, an associate professor of human development at Brigham Young University, in an interview with the Deseret News. "There’s a lot of stuff on at Halloween right now, a lot of scary things. Some of it is appropriate, some of it not so appropriate for kids.”
Coyne pointed to a study in the journal Media Psychology (subscription required) in which researchers asked college students to think back to a time when they were younger and watched a scary movie. The study, which was published in 1999, examined whether these students still had fright reactions to the scary media. Of the 153 participants, 138 reported still having similar reactions to the scary movies watched during childhood or adolescence.
What is appropriate for a child can be different depending on his or her age and personality. Coyne said children below the age of 7 typically fear the supernatural and that those fears change as children grow older.
“Fear of monsters is an extremely common fear (for children under 7) just because they have a hard time distinguishing between fantasy and reality,” Coyne said. “Older kids are more afraid of more realistic fears … an earthquake or a robber or a murder — things that could actually happen in the real world.”
One of the early studies examining child fears in the 1976 Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry (subscription required) that's referenced by researchers today examined the fears of 54 children in kindergarten, second grade and sixth grade. David Bauer, who conducted the study, asked the children to express their fears verbally and also in drawings during individual interviews. He found that as the grade level increased, the occurrence of fears with imaginary themes such as ghosts and monsters went down and instead shifted to more realistic fears involving bodily injury and physical danger.
Despite this general trend, individual differences in terms of fear should always be considered, Coyne said.
“Some kids are just more anxious by nature, more fearful by nature. I would just recommend to parents to know your kids,” Coyne said. “So even if a website says (a movie) is totally acceptable for a 7-year-old, if you’ve got a 7-year-old that’s pretty highly anxious and gets afraid of media very easily, you might rethink it.”
The 5-year-old son of Shawna Jennings of Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, recently told her he was scared to be in his room at night because of clowns, Jennings said. The mother of four children ages 2 to 8 years old learned he had come across an image of a clown on an iPad not too long before that, and Jennings said it took a long time for her son to shake that image from his mind.
“It hit home for me that kids really do internalize what they see and how it makes them feel,” Jennings wrote in response to questions from the Deseret News. "It’s our job as parents to understand our kids’ limits and to be mindful of the feelings and images we expose them to.”
Jennings wrote that when her family watches Halloween movies together, they “go for the kid-friendly movies that focus more on humor than anything else.” She also tries to avoid movies with “creepy music.” Ones that her family likes are “Alvin and the Chipmunks Meet the Wolfman,” “Hocus Pocus” and “The Nightmare Before Christmas.”
Coyne also recommended “The Nightmare Before Christmas,” although she said the movie was not one she would show her 5-year-old.
Mary Johnson of Queen Creek, Arizona, told the Deseret News she avoids movies containing an extreme amount of violence. A mother of four children ages 6 months to 8 years old, Johnson said she enjoys sharing with her kids Halloween films she watched growing up. Ones that her family likes are “Casper,” “Hocus Pocus” and “The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad.”
To learn about how child-friendly or scary a movie is, Coyne looks online at media websites aimed at sharing such information.
One she uses is Common Sense Media, online at commonsensemedia.org, and others include The Dove Foundation at dove.org; Plugged In from Focus on the Family, online at pluggedin.com; Parent Previews at parentpreviews.com; and Movie Guide at movieguide.org.
Common Sense Media's Parenting Editor Caroline Knorr shared several tips to consider in a recent blog post.
“Stick to animation, which helps (younger kids) realize that it’s fantasy," Knorr wrote. "Avoid any dangerous material involving characters near their age."
Knorr added that older kids, ages 8 to 10, can handle slightly scarier content, but she still recommends parents choose movies “without gore or physical harm.”
For middle-school-age kids, Knorr wrote that pushing boundaries might be acceptable but parents still “should be mindful of blood and gore” and should “stick to movies that have humor mixed in, or those with safe-and-sound endings.”
Halloween movies
Here are some Halloween movie recommendations from Common Sense Media, organized by age. Please note that this list is not all-inclusive.
Kids ages 3-6
“Pooh’s Heffalump Halloween Movie” (2005) (ages 3 and up)
“It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown!” (1966) (ages 4 and up)
“Alvin and the Chipmunks Meet the Wolfman” (2000) (ages 5 and up)
“Monsters, Inc.” (2001) (ages 5 and up)
“Mickey’s House of Villains” (2002) (ages 5 and up)
“Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit” (2005) (ages 5½ and up)
“The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad” (1949) (ages 6 and up)
“The Worst Witch” (1986) (ages 6 and up)
“Scared Shrekless” (2010) (ages 6 and up)
Kids ages 7-9
“The Ghost and Mr. Chicken” (1966) (ages 7 and up)
“E.T. the Extra Terrestrial” (1982) (ages 7 and up)
“The Nightmare Before Christmas” (1993) (ages 7 and up)
“Halloweentown” (1998) (ages 7 and up)
“Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone” (2001) (ages 7 and up)
“The Witches” (1990) (ages 8 and up)
“Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets” (2002) (ages 8 and up)
“Beetlejuice” (1988) (ages 9 and up)
Kids ages 10-12
“Frankenstein” (1931) (ages 10 and up)
“Young Frankenstein” (1974) (ages 10 and up)
“Ghostbusters” (1984) (ages 10 and up)
“Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban” (2004) (ages 10 and up)
“Corpse Bride” (2006) (ages 10 and up)
“ParaNorman” (2012) (ages 10 and up)
“Hocus Pocus” (1993) (ages 11 and up)
“Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire” (2005) (ages 12 and up)
“Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix” (2007) (ages 12 and up)
“Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince” (2009) (ages 12 and up)
“Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows — Part 1” (2010) (ages 12 and up)
“Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows — Part 2” (2011) (ages 12 and up)
Email: lpeterson@deseretnews.com