The theory that children need to compensate for their own hapless dependence by imagining themselves huge and powerful and cruel has also normalised all manner of frightening playacting, equating children with monsters, childhood with a savage state. Stephen Jay Gould, the biologist, has pointed out that kids don't have an innate kinship with dinosaurs, but that it has been fostered by intensive marketing; the relationship seems based in some idea of shared primitiveness - and future extinction. Lots of toys appeal to the idea of children's savagery: from huge furry, clawed slippers for tiny tots to wear to bed to warn off any other beasts in the night, to dinosaur lunchboxes and watches.As a gift catalogue describes, 'at the touch of a button, the fearsome tyrannosaurus rex emits a blood-curdling little roar.'
In the very midst of consecrating innocence, the modern mythology of childhood ascribes to children a specially rampant natural appetite for all kinds of transgressive pleasures, including above all the sado-masochistic thrills of fear. And these child heroes - and heroines - now enjoy a monopoly on all kinds of unruly passions which adults later have to learn to control in themselves.

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