New Movies

My 6 year old daughter E has a very imaginative mind. If she watches anything new, her mind would wander and almost freak out because she didn’t know what would happen. This would manifest itself when the movies she would watch are filled with stressful situations and bad people.

It peaked when I took her to watch Inside Out 2 a while ago. We couldn’t get past 20-30 minutes of the movie, so from that day on, we didn’t want her to watch anything new. I personally didn’t want to risk a meltdown during the day and a rolling wave of nightmares during the night. Too many experiences like that with E, so we stayed away from anything new.

Recently, she was very curious about Moana 2. I’m not sure what triggered her curiosity, but maybe it was navigating Disney+ when she was allowed to watch TV. Seeing those ads at the top of the screen work if that’s the case. Regardless, E was pushing us to let her watch the new movie and we ended up letting her.

We were all downstairs watching the beginning of the movie. I was holding baby L and my wife was laying with our 4 year old son C. E was squished between us and it was a good (and calm!) family moment. For the first 15 minutes of the movie, everything was fine. Then baby L was stirring for his nap so I needed to go put him to sleep. I didn’t get to watch the rest of the movie, but in the aftermath of the movie, nothing happened. Not a scary thought from E, not a tantrum, not any anxiety about sleeping at night with the new movie digesting in her mind.

It was as if E turned a corner and is starting to mature. She wasn’t phased by the movie at all and in fact, she wanted to watch it again. Of course we couldn’t watch it that same day, so I said we could eventually watch it one day in the future so I could also see what happens in the movie. I’m glad that new things aren’t freaking E out anymore and now she can let her curious mind wander - one new movie at a time.