That's kind of a stretch, but the future Alchemists and engineers find inspiration in the HP series. A truth potion in a fantasy story.....or a serum when the gov't uses it.....?

Most fundamentalist parents are very opposed to stories like Harry Potter.

I'm going to take a while to get back to that point. My son had a difficult time with reading at first, which frustrated him, because he knew he was missing out on some really great stuff. He was still smart for his age, he loved to take things apart and put them back together from about the age of four or so. The reading thing just wasn't clicking for him.
This was about 20+ years ago, and I don't know about now, but they were not teaching phonics then. Just endlss lists of memorized words.
I found something very similar to the Hooked on Phonics progam for him, but not nearly that costly. Within a couple weeks he went from Sonic the Hedgehog comic books to yep....those 800 page Harry Potter books.

Bless JK Rowling and all of those fanciful characters and rollicking romps. She made not just my son, but an entire generation of children eager to read some intimidatingly thick books.

There was a similar backlash about Harry Potter. Not only teaching kids about the occult, but romanticising it in the process.

Kids are actually pretty good at telling fiction from fact. They make up their own stories, and they know that they're not the truth. If they really couldn't tell fact from fiction, they'd be in pieces every time Tom maims Jerry, or the other way around. Instead, they lap up cartoon violence because... well... it's funny. And nobody's actually coming to harm.

Kids don't believe for a minute that Cinderella, Jack and the Beanstalk, or any of those are actual real people. They easily understand the concept of fairy tales. They believe in Jesus and Santa Claus only because adults present them as being real, rather than just stories.

Similarly, violent comic books, films and video games don't turn them into sociopaths. Though if they have sociopathic tendencies, then they might be drawn to particularly violent content.

Kids outgrow magical thinking if you let them.

I think it is the other way around, you train kids to believe in God, Angels and life after death, they are going to far more open to believing in fantasy as reality, especially when witches, demons, ghost, unicorns and leviathan are all in the freaking bible anyway.

No need to avoid delightful entertaining fantasy fiction. But parents should teach the kids how to think rationally and understand these things are make believe.

Harry Potter are children's fantasy books. My mom told me they were not real and they are only for pure entertainment. They are about good vs. evil. I don't relate god to any of it.

I agree ET the extraterrestrial is selling sentimental magic to kids and most of this kind of crap is anti-science

I think younger parents are more laid back plus there is the rise in nonbelievers as well who see these holidays as just fun events for kids and don't attach all the supernatural crap past generations did.

We got infected with Walt Disney who we now know never had a female as the mother. She was always wicked We had Alfred Hitchcock on TV and so on What I am saying the television or media entity will always be in our lives from now on. do not worry , look at the kids after the parkland shooting, They are wonderfully bright and together

Isn't it more a question of how the parents deal with it? Children accept fantasy for what it is and seem to know that it isn't real. If their parents choose to make comparisons with religion then that is their concern but if they have read fantasy, I think the children are more likely to disbelieve, then.

This is a ridiculous idea. Introducing your kids to Narnia, Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, will certainly be better for them then if you did not.

I have to disagree.First you are exposing them to a multiverse of beliefs, from Potteresque witches to The Force to Vulcans to Wizards and hobbits. A t some point every kid realizes 1/ they can't all be true and 2/ they make as much sense as any "organized" religion's fantasies. And every fantasy world has good and bad people,but a recognition that being "good"is better. Finally, and this may be the most subversive part of it all - I can't think of a story-line where the protagonists are also "the powers that be" and the rules makers. Hogwarts comes close, but the real authorities are outside the school. Even C.S. Lewis' work, which is Xianity with a fur coat has the bad folk being the royals. so instead of teaching kids toaccept religion, they are teaching kids that rule makers are not trustworthy, there's goodness in you and taking care of each other is more important than being obedient to authorities.

You'll find that the most religious countries are also the ones that ban the most books Explain to children "it's not real" is the best way to approach religion too!

I read fantasy books, my kids were raised on all sorts of fantasy as well as "Life on Earth" and Cosmos from their earliest days. I think fantasty opens our minds to think laterally.

No. Good parenting takes care of this and many other things.

No. I was so indoctinated as a kid that I thought godlessness was a sign of a person with deep issues. I think my exposure to good fantasy helped me recognize how the Bible was bad fanatasy.

I don't think so, my 11 year old loves Harry Potter but her critical thinking is already evident, she'll get the difference. Must be genetic lol

Children have magical thinking, most grow out of it. Some cling onto it into adulthood, religion encourages this in many sects.

Allowing your child to have an imagination does not equal teaching your child the fantastic is reality.

I would have to agree with you. Children in the sense of Harry Potter would not be conditioned because Harry Potter a Witchcraft have nothing to do with God. Witchcraft is about spells and the occult not identifying with a deiety lime Wicca or other branches of Paganism does. Mind you Paganism doesn't idol worship they worship nature.

I have read fantasy and science fiction since I was about ten. I feel that it made me more aware of what fantasy was and how it was conxtructed. By the time I was twenty-four I was an atheist and nothing in the following forty-four years has changed that. Of course my recent reaquaintance with my high classmates some described me as a geek before the term was popular, so it must have worked.

Nope a good imagination is a good thing . Not only that the more gods I knew about the more I realised they were all made up

I think it exposes them to fairy tales, and when they start to see that life isn't a fairy tale, they get disillusioned. If it's all they know, they're in for a rude awakening that someone who wasn't coddled isn't in for, for the most part. I think it has less to do with religion or God, and more to do with just getting by in society. Just take one example of love. Kids watch Disney movies and believe every story has a happy ending and the good person always wins or gets the girl, or the girl always gets the Prince. Things like that are what poisons kids in my opinion. It's not realistic. One of the lines I love the most in a song is by Bruce Hornsby and Don Henley in "The End of the Innocence".

"When "happily ever after" fails
And we've been poisoned by these fairy tales"