The Child as Hero

In Louisiana Folktales "The Singing Bones" and Perrault's "Little Thumbling", the children are seen as the heroes because of their ability to think fast and save their siblings from danger. These stories are prime examples of children outwitting their enemies in order to save their loved ones and grow as people in the process.

In "The Singing Bones" the mother of the 25 children killed her children for food and fed them to her husband. At the end, when the father was looking for the children, she told the father that they were at their grandmother's house. Later on, when the father went outside, the children spoke to him saying, "Our mother killed us, Our father ate us..." He then killed his wife and buried their bones in the cemetery in front of his home. If the children never would've spoke to their father about what their mother did to them, he never would've found out that they were dead.
In "Little Thumbling", the father was the first one to come up with the idea of abandoning his children, which was different from all the other stories. He couldn't afford to feed all his children, so he wanted to have them sent out to the woods and that way he would only have to feed himself and his wife. Little Thumbling heard their conversation of course, and made a plan for them to come back home the first time, but the second time the crumbs were eaten. They stumbled across a house unknowingly, only to find out that an ogre who eats little children.
After outwitting the ogre and escaping, the children got back home safely all because of the bravery and courage of Little Thumbling. He outsmarted the ogre and his wife in order to get his siblings back safely. In the end of the story, Little Thumbling found a position in a kingdom as the king's messenger and made enough money for his family to live comfortably.
In Bettelheim's "The Uses of Enchantment". he mentions that "Hansel and Gretel", the child must learn to let go before their parents force them to encounter pressures and obstacles. They must overcome certain challenges. Specifically, these challenges are related to a maternal figure in the story, which is why in most of the tales of "Hansel and Gretel", the mother was the one to abandon the kids in the forest. Children have to face their fears and must be able to overcome certain tasks in order to gain independence to be able to survive amongst themselves.