by Charlie Brooks posted in Parenting

Last month I pondered whether old-school Pokémon would give my kids nightmares. Well, we went through spooky Lavender Town together, and the answer is no. Despite all the ghosts and creepy music, no nightmares occurred. However, that part of the video game did set the stage for some other interesting conversations.
For those who need catching up, Lavender Town is part of the original Pokémon video games, which I started playing with my kids recently. The silly game about catching pocket monsters turns sinister in a small town with a tower that holds the souls of dead Pokémon. It is the very definition of mood whiplash.
I've been wondering how my kids would react to the creepy ambience and explicit themes of death within Lavender Town. In the end, the creepy music didn't bother them, although it still wracks my nerves. The mention of death caught them a little off-guard. One bit character really caught my son's attention. Wandering through a tower dedicated to dead Pokémon, one character had only a single line of dialogue, but it was a doozy: "My Growlithe...why did you die"" For those unfamiliar with the games, a Growlithe is a fire-breathing dog. So this girl had basically lost her family pet...that happened to breathe fire.

That one line of dialogue really stuck with my kids. Much later in the game, they still occasionally chimed into the narrative with, "That poor girl and her Growlithe." When I caught...