Emotions in Imaginative Situations: The Valued Place of Fairytales for Supporting Emotion Regulation

Abstract

Fairytales represent a long-standing cultural practice used by early childhood teachers for supporting children's social and emotional development. Yet contemporary practices see governments demanding a more academic curriculum. In drawing upon cultural-historical research, we theorise how fairytales help children to collectively develop emotion regulation, where the unity of emotions and cognition are foregrounded during the telling, retelling, and role-playing of fairytales, allowing for a dynamic interplay between interpsychological and intrapsychological functioning. We suggest that fairytales have a valuable place within early childhood programs because they introduce emotionally charged imaginative situations which we believe support children's emotion regulation in group care situations.

Notes

¹The common presentation in kindergartens of the story of Little Red Riding Hood involves a small child taking a basket of food to her sick grandmother and on the way meeting a wolf who diverts her along another path, allowing the wolf to go to the grandmother's house before the child and to dress up as the grandmother, with the view to eating the child. The child is saved by a woodcutter who chases off the wolf.

²In kindergartens a common interpretation of the fairytale of the Three Little Pigs is that it is a story about a family of five pigs, where each of the three little pigs leave home and build themselves a house—one from straw, one from stick, and one from bricks. A wolf goes to each house and tries to blow the house down with the view to eating the little pig. Each pig escapes and they all live together in the brick house. The wolf tries to climb down the chimney to get to the little pigs. They boil a pot of water, scalding the wolf, who runs away never to return.

³Three bears leave their house to go for a walk in the forest while they wait for their porridge to cool. While they are gone a small child called Goldilocks enters their home and sits on each of the bear's chairs, breaking baby bear's chair. This is followed by Goldilocks tasting each bear's porridge but eating all of baby bear's porridge. Finally, Goldilocks goes upstairs and tries out all of the bears' beds, settling into baby bear's bed. Goldilocks falls asleep. When the bears come home they find the mayhem and Goldilocks asleep. Goldilocks wakes up frightened and runs out of the house.