Apparently, there is a Halloween display at Walmart that is so scary its giving one Texas woman’s three children nightmares.
“It looked like a real, live monster,” 4-year-old Grace Whitney told KSN news.
From KSN:
Adriana Whitney said she didn’t expect to see something like it while shopping for groceries.
She said it was too much for her three young daughters, the youngest of whom is 20 months old.
“At this age, you cannot explain that this is a toy, that’s not real,” Whitney said.
Whitney said her daughters had nightmares after seeing the decoration and couldn’t sleep in their rooms.
“They had to sleep in my room because they were so scared,” she said.
Walmart moved the display over to another section after Whitney complained, but a spokesperson told the station that the decoration will remain in the store.
Hey, at least it wasn’t a Christmas decoration.
Texas mother angry over graphic Halloween display in Wal-Mart [KSN]
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If there’s a lawsuit leveled against Walmart they can always get advice from Santa Claus who miraculously returns every year to traumatize millions of screaming babies.
I take my kids to the Halloween section and freak them out on a regular basis. No fun being a parent if you don’t get to scramble your progeny’s brains by inserting irrational fears of spiders, skeletons, and tombstones. Halloween rocks.
If she thinks that’s bad one of Amarillo TX’s perennial haunted houses had a billboard this year with a dummy being hanged underneath it. Not only that, the dummy had some pneumatics in him to make him kick while dangling from the noose. 911 got bombarded for DAYS about the dummy. I thought it was hilarious. Sadly, the city made them take it down because it violated a billboard area ordinance.
Seriously, my parents never shielded me from stuff like that. They actually parented and made an effort to show me that wasn’t real. They’d show me the box or the place where it plugs in. Now, I end up taking stuff like that apart to see how the animatronics work.
they even called a wahmbulance
lawl
At least it was not a clown…clowns freak out more kids than disembodied heads.
Oh yeah to the mom, buy a helmet, life is tough, get over it.
@SimonSwegles:
Cognitively, children at a certain age (up until about 3 or 4) can’t distinguish between reality and make-believe. You can try to explain until you’re blue in the face but it won’t make any difference because the child’s brain cannot assimilate this new perception of the world. They watch TV, they think the characters are actually real. They watch a movie, they believe it’s happening to them. That’s why parents should NOT be taking very young children to scary movies BTW.
That said, calling the media was a bit much. Learning to deal with fear and nightmares is a natural part of a child’s cognitive development. It would have happened sooner or later.
Aww, the poor little kids got scared. That’s what kids do. Parenting is about helping your children grow up strong, healthy, and well adjusted to their environment, not about changing the environment. Kids will have to deal with headless monsters gooshing blood someday, at least they got to experience it with their mommy around first. Kids have always cried for mommy at bedtime and demanded to sleep with her. That’s what they do whether they see a Halloween display or not.
@RG Actually, they’re probably “schooled” by the government. If they were home schooled, the parent would have to take responsibility for their education and not be such a wuss.
I like JaredUtah’s take. I think that is the appropriate one for this case. All the lady would have to do is point it out to the kids, tell them it is a toy and laugh at it. They may still fear it in their subconscious, but if their parent gives them the message that it is harmless, then at least the will think it is harmless. What this lady did was do nothing if not enforce those irrational fears.
If the kids can’t handle a simple badly made Chinese costume, then what’s going to happen when they grow up and are exposed to REAL scary things in the real world or are exposed to “Saw 13″ and “Hostel 28″?
Maybe that’s a bad example. I can deal with a Halloween costume but the TRAILERS for the “Saw” and “Hostel” movies scare the crud out of me.
This lady went way overboard! Is she going to go and demand that all her neighbors put away their scary Halloween decorations because it’s scaring her kids. This lady could have easily bypassed the Halloween section of Wal-mart. It’s not like you have to go through the Halloween area.
I love Halloween and my kids love it too. I stress to them that it is all fake and make-up.
i say let them watch the texas chain saw massacre, or devils reject, then that thing won’t seem so scary anymore.
When I was a kid I was scared to death of Michael Jackson’s Thriller video. So my parents would hum the theme from that whenever I was being bad. It worked well.
In what way can you not tell a kid somethings a toy?
Thriller didn’t scare me..it made me want to dance, actually.
@Odiwan: @Chryss: Try out the light saber idea, let me know how it might turn out. My only problem would be if there was actual bashing and the store made me pay for the display damages. Though, I suppose if I went to a Wal-Mart then it would be moot because the store’s just crappy enough anyway.
I’m a prankster by nature, I always like the laugh. It’s why I think I’ll eventually make a good parent. I’m the kind of person to set up a “free lemonade” stand in a park and watch people approach it carefully, wondering if it is really lemonade or lemon fresh pine sol.
@MariSama44: Well, you can, but that’s no guarantee they’ll believe you. I mean, obviously the monster’s just pretending to be fake until your back is turned and then BAM! He steals your head as a replacement.
Man, grownups don’t know shit about monsters.
It must’ve been a freakin’ slow news day for them to air this. While I understand her complaining to the store, what I don’t get is why waste everyone’s time & report it to the news outlet? Thats a bit much. Call up a WallyWorld manager, have them move it to the Halloween aisle and be done with it. Move on.
@Benstein: LOL! That sounds like my father who would chase me around the pool with his hands on the top of his head like fins and hum the Jaws theme when I wasn’t being a good girl.
Dear Parents of America,
I do not care about your children. One bit. Not even a little.
Sincerely,
Somebody who could care less about your children’s bad dreams, bodily functions, grades, fears, or inability to act civilized while in public.
P.S.- Stop shopping for groceries at WalMart. Gross.
@MissJ: That’s what I was getting at. God knows I have no love for Wal-Mart; I’m just saying that because it’s developmentally appropriate for kids at that age to have nightmares, her case is not actionable. She can’t prove that the store intended to harm her kid, or did so through negligence.