My kids love listening to their Yoto box. It’s an audio player that takes cards and plays an audiobook for them to listen to. When they can’t have screen time to watch movies, they instead listen to the movies in audiobook form. As my 5 year old daughter says, it’s allowing her to see the movie in her imagination.

My kids have been obsessed with the Monsters Inc. audiobook recently. They have always been scared to watch the movie, but they aren’t afraid to listen to the audiobook. I think it’s because they can’t see the cartoon monsters and they can imagine more friendly looking ones instead. Over time, after what seemed like hundreds of listens, they finally started watching Monsters Inc. on Disney+. My daughter can make her way through it all, but my 4 year old son needs to skip the “scarier” parts.

Since my kids have seen the movie and heard the audiobook so many times, I just assumed they knew exactly what was going on and who all the characters are. It was really surprising to hear a question the other day from my son asking me if I knew what Mike calls his owner. I was confused for a minute because Mike doesn’t have an owner. He’s a monster and he works with Sully. I had no idea what my son was getting at.

I told my son I had no idea and he said Mike calls his owner schmoopsie-poo. It dawns on me that my son thinks Mike’s girlfriend in the movie is his owner! My son gets the concept of a wife since he knows Mommy is my wife. I asked him if he meant Mike’s wife and he said yes. I can’t say I’d argue with his logic and we went about our day after a good laugh.