Looking for some SOCKS

Not the ones to wear.. but to narrate

Let me start from the beginning..

The pandemic lockdowns have meant that kids need to stay more indoors.

That implies that we need more creative ways to engage them.

And, let me tell you, that engaging grand kids is not easy.. that too, remotely.

Increased social awareness these days and the desire to be or be seen as - politically correct pretty much makes all stories that our generation grew up on, unacceptable.

Let me share some samples of the dilemmas that I go through these days

Take the Little red riding hood

• should we call the wolf 'big and bad'
• should the wolf eat the grandmother
• should the wolf be killed at the end of the story
• etc etc etc

Or Goldilocks

• is it ok to just walk into someone's house, just because nobody is there
• is it ok to eat / break things without asking someone, when the soup was hot or warm - implying that it was made recently and the family might have stepped away briefly
• etc etc etc

Or stories from our mythology

• who are demons
• what about some who tease girls and save who save 
• or those cursed for misbehavior with others
• how to picture kings who kill to expand their kingdom

Or from fables

• being cunning - or is it being smarter than others
• about unreasonable people in power
• should we talk of fairies and other fantasies or be only realistic [and drab]

Or stories such as Enid Blyton

• how do we justify stereotypes of home makers or girls, where some stories have such explicit labeling
• or an adventurous girl characterized as a tomboy

Even in writing this, had to think a lot to use positive sounding words, maybe with a negative prefix and not a negative word, so that this post and maybe blog itself, be labeled as not acceptable by a runaway AI algorithm..

So, what is SOCKS - that is my classification of SOcially Correct Kids Stories

if you know such stories or have references, please share.