Last Sunday we took our girls to see Finding Dory at the theater. Our younger daughter Lila, who just turned five, specifically had been requesting to see this movie for weeks. I had a couple fleeting thoughts about whether it might be too emotional for her from the reviews I read, but we decided to take the chance and see how she did.
Now Lila has always gotten easily scared and overwhelmed by certain scenes in movies and TV shows, even cartoons created for little kids. One time we watched a very random Hansel and Gretel cartoon clip on YouTube that I think gave her nightmares. We also had to leave halfway during Inside Out because she was too worried about Joy and Sadness being lost and never making it home. About a year later, she ended up watching the movie with us at home, and even then, we had to keep reassuring her there would be a happy ending.
After that, she somehow successfully made it through Despicable Me 2 and Hotel Transylvania 2, I think mostly because the “scariness” was silly and there weren’t too many overly emotional scenes.
Well, with Finding Dory, she was doing ok for most of the movie until about the last 30 minutes. I won’t go into details, but the part of the movie where it seems like Dory will really never find her parents was a super emotional scene where even I was crying. Lila was sitting in my lap by that time, and I saw her quietly wiping away tears.
“Are you ok, Lila?” I whispered. “Are you crying?”
On a sidenote, on my other side was Lila’s 7-year-old sister HJ, who was snoring loudly because she had fallen asleep during the first five minutes of the movie.
As soon as I asked Lila that question, she broke out in this really loud sob, and started wailing, saying, “I want to go home, Mommy! I want to go home!”
I kept reassuring her that everything was going to be ok, because well, it’s a Disney movie, and also I didn’t want her to leave before she saw the happy ending, because maybe that would be even more traumatizing!
Eventually she got herself together and we watched the rest of the movie. With its funny, happy, silly ending, she seemed like she had recovered. But I was still a little doubtful and worried that she was a bit scarred from all the “big feelings” she had experienced. So later I tried to talk to her about how it was ok to feel sad sometimes, and that it was ok to cry. And her response was, “Mommy, I wasn’t crying because I was sad. That was a happy cry.”
Oh, ok, Lila, if you say so… It looks like, as usual, my message didn’t really get through loud and clear. I kind of let it go, but it’s been on my mind ever since, because she has also been asking questions like, “Are there bad guys in real life?” And of course, even at her young age she has already seen times where the endings aren’t always happy in real life.
I guess she’s just a big emotions kind of girl (God helps us when we approach the tween years). I don’t have to look too far to see who she inherited that from… even now I can cry during a commercial or from listening to Kelly Clarkson’s “Piece by Piece” one too many times. My husband, on the other hand, I probably most understood after watching how Zachary Quinto as Spock handled his emotions during the Star Trek movie.
If you have any tips for how you handle scary, emotional, overwhelming movies, stories, TV shows, fairy tales, etc. with your little ones, please feel free to share! (I did find this post by Mrs. Pizza really helpful in that regard!)
In some ways, I don’t want to just avoid them, because it’s inevitable that these situations will eventually come up in life. But I also don’t want to scar her for life at the age of five. Also, then we would only be able to watch G-rated movies. Do they even exist these days? She did watch the Peanuts movie without incident, except I think she thought some parts were boring. And HJ also fell asleep. As she did in Despicable Me. I think I’m seeing a pattern here… Not sure why I even keep trying to go to the movies with my kids, but please do let me know your thoughts!
blogger / nectarine / 2043 posts
I am very interested in this topic. My kiddo is only 3, but she already seems to experience emotions in a big way. She reacts very strongly to bad guys in even the basic cartoons, and let’s not even talk about my failed attempt at introducing her to Dumbo. Same thing happens with fairy tales. She hasn’t yet sat through a movie long enough for me to contemplate taking her to one in a movie theater, but I wonder about these things too.
grapefruit / 4923 posts
i don’t have any tips on this, but i think it’s hilarious that hj keeps falling asleep in movies!
my 3.5 year old is going through a phase of not wanting to watch bad guys. he doesn’t want to watch frozen because of hans holding a sword over elsa at the end, and he couldn’t make it past the first 10 minutes of cars 2. so i had him watch winnie the pooh. very mild.
blogger / apricot / 367 posts
@Mrs. Carrot: Disney movies and fairy tales can have some traumatizing moments! We haven’t watched Dumbo but I can see the same thing happening to us
blogger / apricot / 367 posts
@edelweiss: I was thinking Winnie the Pooh had to be rated G
Sounds good to start with baby steps!
nectarine / 2667 posts
My almost 4 year old son needs conflict free entertainment! He tenses up at Daniel Tiger sometimes! When he has movie days at school, I heavily prep him. Either we watch it together, which he doesn’t like, or I tell him the plot of the movie repeatedly. He also mostly sits with books or another toy and just watches the movie over his shoulder.
I do tell him it’s okay to not like movies and we don’t watch them in general, although I offer frequently. I’m not into suspense either and don’t like not knowing if something “bad” will happen in movies I’ve never seen. i push his comfort zone with TV: they’re only 30 minutes and not too intense (like, I had to force an episode of Peg + Cat on him!)
Weirdly, he’s so into Iron Man and has seen quite a bit of Iron Man 2 at the furniture store with no protests!?!?
kiwi / 706 posts
We were just thinking about taking our DD to this movie. So we gave her a test run with Finding Nemo at home. She was too overwhelmed so we decided not to go. She cried during Inside Out too because it was too sad with Sadness. She also demanded to leave during Cinderella when the father died. If anyone has recs on good rated G movies, please share!
blogger / pomegranate / 3044 posts
Curious George movies are pretty tame! Kishan gets similarly worried, although he’s made it through some of the scary classics like jungle book
guest
I have not seen the movie but have been advised to wait until my son, who is adopted, is older to allow him to view the movie. The theme around loss of parents can be a trigger for some children who have experienced a similar loss. In the end Dory finds out it was her fault she became lost due to her disability and that her parents are wonderful and have always been searching for her. So many trigger topics for adopted children. Just a thought for those considering viewing the movie with a child who has been adopted or is in foster care.
apricot / 317 posts
Oh Lordy…my son almost lost his marbles crying at Monsters University. He loved the action, and scary didn’t bother him…but when it looks like the characters are going their separate ways, he burst into tears and wanted to leave. I eventually persuaded him to stay because I knew it would be happy…but he was SO upset about it, even weeks later!
blogger / nectarine / 2600 posts
I was just thinking about posting about this since we just saw it this weekend! I cried so it can be emotional but I dont think my kids understood totally so to them it probably wasnt
guest
I just took my 3.5 year old girl to see finding dory yesterday and she didn’t enjoy it. She got super sad about dory not being able to find her parents and wanted to leave. But we stuck it out so she could see the happy ending. I wouldn’t recommend this movie to preschoolers- too many emotions that they don’t know how to process yet!
grape / 85 posts
So hard to know what kids will find traumatic!
After watching Winnie the Pooh at a friend’s house my daughter was so upset about Pooh getting stuck in Rabbit’s hole. (I can see how it would be anxious-making, thinking about being stuck in a hole for a week…) We had to talk about that a lot.
hostess / wonderful persimmon / 25556 posts
Yeah, this is why we haven’t seen a movie in the theater yet! I have to screen them first and don’t want to spend the money on a movie twice. It’s also rated PG, which I think is too much for our 4 year old. I’m waiting patiently for a good George or Pooh movie (though I find Pooh to be scary at time…) to come out. I did hear that My Little Pony is doing a movie that will be out in November 2017….
I think it’s hilarious that HJ fell asleep!!
hostess / wonderful persimmon / 25556 posts
Also, this was posted in a local moms group I am in. A warning for foster/adoptive parents. It has spoilers, if you don’t want to know what happens in a Disney movie.
https://www.facebook.com/edwbowden/posts/1146421442044892
guest
We have a pizza and movie night about once a week for the past year with our now 3.5 yo. She can deal with things being mildly scary. She gets a little frightened but is comforted by us. But these kind of emotional things are way too much for her. She definitely got upset at Toy Story when Buzz and Woody are left behind at the gas station, but we made it through that. We’ve always had the same idea that sometimes pushing a bit to see it through is helpful in that she sees everything worked out. We had to turn off The Gruffalo’s Son, on the other hand, because she could not deal with the boy wandering out into the dark woods without his dad. Based on the themes that bother her, Finding Nemo is the one Pixar movie she has NOT seen! Dory won’t be coming for us anytime soon either.
We have watched Up, Inside Out, Ratatouille, Winnie the Pooh, Muppets movies, Monsters, Minions, Despicable Me, Toy Story(ies?), Frozen, Tangled, Cinderella. (Those princess movies tend to have an emotional time, too, but she’s handled it.)