Terrifying Bunny on the Loose!

     Admittedly, this isn't the cutest bunny in the world.  But it is not the ugliest either.  Some of you who have kids ages 6 and up through teens may know that this is Bonny.  Some may be surprised to know that this bunny, along with a few moderately weird friends strikes terror in children everywhere.  No, it's not the scared of clowns thing.  It's something entirely new and different.
     Bonny is a feared character in the amazingly popular video game app called Five Nights at Freddy's.  I first saw it several months ago when my nephews were playing it on their ipads.  My 8 year old son was both intrigued and terrified.  What happens in this game is that the player sits alone in a dark room waiting.  Sound exciting?  It gets better (wink, wink).  Basically, the player is limited to only a few actions while waiting: open and close the doors to the room he is in, turn lights on and off, and look at security cameras to see if Bonny or any of his "animatronic" buddies are lurking.  The climax is when one of these Chuck E. Cheesesque characters jumps out and scares you.  Hence the name jump scare given to these types of games.  The thought of this bunny terrifies my 8 year old son.
     Now, mind you, the kid has shot legs off of zombies in Call of Duty. No sweat. He has laughed as a baby chick (animated) goes through a grinder and gets put into a can with his name on it (Can Your Pet), and he has kicked some serious butt on Mortal Kombat.  But, what the heck?!  He gets freaked out at the mention of Freddy Fazzbear or Bonny Bunny or Foxy or whoever else? 
     For a while, I didn't get it.  I thought, "Wow, these kids today are backward!  Zombies are fine but Chuck E. Cheese is a living horror."  Then it dawned on me.  It's not about the characters.  It wouldn't matter if it was Elmo jumping out at them.  It would still be scary.  My take is that it's about a loss of control.  
     Kids today are so in control of everything.  They are growing up in a world where they press a button and get a result.  They have learned to live vicariously through avatars who may be made to look like anyone.  They may beat and destroy monsters and people by pressing x and y (mostly x.  I know this because I play Mortal Kombat.)  They may create the exact world they want in games like Minecraft.  But, in these Jump Scare games, their control is minimal.  Sit, wait, have something come into their world at a time not of their choosing.  And to make it worse...who knows which of them it might be?  It might even be the mind-numbing teddy bear, Freddy Fazzbear!  Wow.
     So, now I'm left to wonder, as a mom, what do I do to get my child to learn to let go and not be so afraid of losing control?  Guess I could shell out the $3.99 and add Five Nights at Freddy's to his curriculum.

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