The princess, who is beautiful and good, deserves the love and happiness she finds. The witch, who is evil and hideous, deserves humiliation and sorrow. Everybody gets what they deserve in the end, of course. Thats the way the world works. Or not.

My daughter Adora, who is eight, would call this sort of scenario banal. Its one of her favorite words these days and she uses it all the time. Maybe she overuses it. But if you stop to think about it, a childs world is suffused with the banal. They make construction paper turkeys to commemorate the friendship between early settlers and Indian tribes, they sit through movies that feature singing tea-cups with lisps, and they watch childrens programming where morality is delivered up pre-packaged on a platter.

Adora is a writer. Shes been writing since she was four years old and published her first book at age seven. She just finished a political satire, and is now working on a short play that features a dialog between Tolstoy and Chekhov. One of the things people find most surprising about her writing is her ability to create complex characters. Her protagonists have flaws and her villains sometimes have moments of hesitation. Many adults assume that children naturally see the world in black and white, in terms of good vs. evil. Is this really true? Or do we teach them, with incessant repetition and omission, a simplified version of morality that does not hold true in the real world?

As adults we know that all evil people are not ugly, fat people are not always jolly, greedy, or bumbling, and that good people sometimes have dark moments, dirty secrets, and a tendency to do the wrong thing. We know that the good guys dont always win, and that, ultimately, sometimes there arent good guys and bad guys, but just people, lost in their own lives, and caught in the thrall of their own past.

And yet we teach our children, through story and through song, that right and wrong are fixed. Do we explain things in black and white terms because we are afraid that our children are unable to come to grasp anything more complex, and that without a strict moral compass they will be lost? Or do we explain things in black and white simply because its easier?

Its easier to parent if your child thinks that smoking will make them a bad person and getting good grades will make them a good person. Explaining things in terms of black and white also takes less time, minimizes confounding questions, and reinforces parental authority.

Is it dangerous to encourage children to think for themselves? Is it dangerous to allow children access to information or literature that may frighten them? Yes. But its also dangerous to limit children. And its also dangerous to lie to children.

Im not saying everyone should throw away their v-chips, hand their kids a copy of Blue Velvet, and take a field trip to Mai Lai. But I do think that taking the time to really explain things, giving kids the information they ask for, and avoiding the excessively banal programming may be in order. Adora is not a genius. She is a creative child who has been allowed to run wild with her ideas and questions. Children who equate education with freedom will blossom. I run an accelerated learning program and speak with many parents who complain that their children can not write, do not like writing, and create only pale imitations of what they read or see on TV. This is because they are not given access to the variety of information they need to mix-and-match, to absorb, process, and create anew. They are imitating a story because it's the only story they know. The witch is always ugly and the good guys always win. Bad people do bad things and good people do good things. And they all lived happily ever after.

Do you need to allow your children access to various versions of the truth so that they can sit down and start on their satirical novellas? No. Does it matter if your child is capable of creating complex characters with realistic problems? Not really. But it is important that your child understands that people in the real world are complex, and that sometimes the answers to their problems do not come in black and white. When you answer a childs questions truthfully, or to the best of your knowledge, when you encourage them to see more than one side of a story, you are widening their perspective and ensuring that their vision will not be narrow. Instead of widening the gap between what they are told and what they see, you can give them answers and questions that will help them come to terms with the realities they are beginning to observe around them. Or you could pop in that copy of The Little Mermaid. You wouldnt want to give them any ideas.