media sensitivities
by kira • February 8, 2013 • attachment parenting • 6 Comments
My husband likes to wind down by watching movies, and when he’s stressed out he wants to see an intense or emotional movie to help him blow through his feelings so that he can relax. I prefer to read books for entertainment. When I watch movies it requires an effort to steel myself for the intensity of the emotions or action. It seems as though my daughter is just like me: acutely sensitive to visual media. (This trait often comes with the HSP package.) She’s only halfway into her second year, so I believe that she shouldn’t be watching much television anyway, but it would be nice if we could sit down as a family and watch a movie together occasionally. So we made some popcorn and tested out some media.
The Polar Express was too scary for her — the action sequences really stressed her out (me too, actually). She tried to watch Ice Age at a friend’s house and came to get me in the first five minutes, telling me it was too scary. The original animated Alice in Wonderland was mostly ok, but she definitely disliked a number of parts. I don’t really like that movie much anyway, so I’m fine with that. Studio Ghibli can only take me so far; I haven’t seen all of Miyazaki’s work, but Nausicaa, Spirited Away, Princess Mononoke, and Laputa are definitely too scary. (She made it through Porco Rosso, but probably because she didn’t understand what was happening and she likes airplanes.)
She likes the Aristocats, provided I fast forward through the more intense action sequences of the dog parts. She loved the end of Close Encounters but it’s a much more stressful movie than I thought, and it required a lot of pauses for explanation and checking in. She likes Star Trek: The Next Gen, provided it’s an episode with no phaser battles or fights (the first time she saw Worf hit an enemy she was very upset, doubly so when a possessed Deanna Troi attacked Worf.) Documentaries usually work, especially ones about space of animals.
So we’re left with Totoro, Kiki, Ponyo, Shaun the Sheep (only at her grandparents’ house, and boy will it be a sad day when she figures out that Netflix works the same at anyone’s house — right now she accepts “we don’t have that movie”), Sesame Street, Fraggle Rock, and selected YouTube dance/music videos. On my list to try: Howl’s Moving Castle, Mary Poppins, the Mary Martin Peter Pan, and the Sword in the Stone. Any suggestions?
Singing in the Rain? LittleA just graduated from short Sesame Street segments and other 2-5 minute quickies on Youtube to Dora the Explorer and Caillou on Amazon Instant, largely due to the two of us both being sick at once and my reading aloud to him triggering my cough, but I doubt either of these would work for a family movie night.
I got an amazing comment elsewhere that I want to copy here, from my friend EM:
We are big movie lovers in our family, especially me. Three of us are also quite sensitive in various ways. And one of the interesting things is it’s hard to predict what will be scary or overwhelming in a movie for someone.
For instance, we’ve never watched Totoro in its entirety. Jago and I tried, but we were both too scared of it. (Yes I was scared of Totoro. Strange creatures living in and around our house? No thank you. Plus the mom being in the hospital was intense for us.)
Miela’s definitely the most sensitive to screen images. She watched some of Howl’s Moving Castle with Jago and I (the two of us love it) but the gooey creatures were kind of scary for her. I think your other things to try are good ideas. We especially love Mary Poppins, or the first half of it at least.
I don’t know how much you might want to keep images of fighting away from your little one. Sometimes I wish we’d done better at that, but honestly, I just like movies so much I tend to be on the more permissive side, because I want to share so much with my kids. Here are some of our family favorites, with mentions of potential scary/intense things
The Princess Bride – Miela gets scared when they kidnap Buttercup and of the Shrieking Eels and of the Fireswamp in general. But she still loves the movie.
Muppet Treasure Island – There is some exciting pirate action near the beginning and the end, but I think that’s about it. This is one of the most watched movies in our house.
The Muppets Take Manhattan – I haven’t seen this as much or as recently, but I can’t think of anything too intense in this one. It was always one of my favorite Muppet movies.
The Muppets – (The most recent one.) This is Jago’s current favorite movie. There are places where Miela gets nervous (though I can’t recall what they are now).
Enchanted – This is one of our whole family’s current favorites. However, I think the witch can be pretty intense toward the end, especially when she turns into a dragon and they have to fight her. And yet, Miela is not scared of any of it and says her favorite part is when the witch turns into the dragon! So hard to predict.
Mirror Mirror – This is the more family friendly recent Snow White movie. Miela loves it. There are some scary parts with a creature in the woods, but she just hides her face for those. If you haven’t seen any Tarsem Singh movies, I highly encourage you to check it out. It’s visually stunning. And the costumes! I think that’s one of the reasons Miela’s likes it. She loves clothes.
Surf’s Up – I don’t think either of our kids is that into this movie, but I have no idea why. Husband and I think it’s awesome. And I can’t think of anything scary in it, or even that emotional. Our favorite thing about it is there’s a character that’s a lot like The Dude (as in Lebowski) that’s voiced by Jeff Bridges. So if you ever wanted to see The Dude as a surfing penguin, this is the movie for you.
Disney Robin Hood – Both the kids love this one, which is one of our more favorite Disney movies. There are of course some fighting scenes, and the final scene is a bit intense, but Miela seems to find it exciting rather than scary.
Disney Cinderella – I understand if you don’t want to show her Disney Princess movies, but of them this is one of my favorites, and Miela’s too. I don’t think there are any moments that are scary. There are some that are exciting. I like that it’s just so damn sincere, in a way that kids movies today just aren’t.
Elf – Yes it’s a Christmas movie, but we watch it all the time here. I think the Central Park Rangers are the only scary part. And they are very brief and mostly background.
Charlotte’s Web – There are two versions, a recent live action and an animated musical one from the 60′s (I think). Jago loves both of them. I don’t really care for them honestly, but if you like the story of Charlotte’s Web, you might like them.
Ella Enchanted – Both kids like this one (though Jago seems to not like to admit it, I think he thinks it’s girly) and I love it. I think it’s a neat new fairy tale, in other words, a fairy tale recently made up and so one I’ve actually never heard before. There is some fighting at a couple points, and conniving bad guys, but it’s not too intense. There are some mean girl stepsisters too.
Star Trek: The Animated Series – Since you mentioned Star Trek, it made me think of this. It seems like a lot of people don’t even know this exists. It’s Kirk and Spock Star Trek, but in half hour animated episodes, all voiced by the original actors. And all new stories too. Jago and I watched through all of them, and we both thought they were pretty awesome. Because it was aimed more at kids, the Kirkness is toned down: no flirting with women, less fist fighting. Actually I can’t remember if there was much fighting at all. As a Star Trek fan, I think these totally stand up.
There is a British cartoon series called “Jane and the Dragon” that is lovely–nice drawing, clever dialogue, good situations. It’s on DVD.
Also, “Annie” has a plucky heroine, good songs, lots of little girls dancing, and Carol Burnett.
I totally agree with the Star Trek animated shows. Captain Daddy and I used to watch them on Saturdays in the sad old days when we had nothing else to nourish our sci-fi hunger. They are quite good.
My boys aren’t terribly sensitive (I think I’m more sensitive to it than they are), but they are about the same age as your daughter, and I’m personally pretty committed to ensuring that they don’t see much in the way of violence until they’re old enough to actually process it, so there may be some value in our favorites:
–They love Mary Poppins. LOVE. IT. They are crazy about “Poppy”. I swear we watch it at least once a week. They imitate the characters, they sing the songs, they dance around, even when we aren’t watching the movie.
–They also like Ratatouille, and I would consider that to be a fairly subdued movie– not too many emotionally stressful situations. The plot is a little sophisticated for the toddler set, and there is some brief gun shooting at the beginning (the woman discovers a rat in her house and begins firing at it– we talk about being kind to animals and “shoo”ing instead of trying to hurt them– we usually just skip that first part anyway).
–I don’t know that it would suit for a family movie night, but Scholastic puts out these lightly-animated (using the book’s illustrations) versions of favorite children’s books, and there’s a DVD that has some Maurice Sendak favorites, including Where The Wild Things Are, In The Night Kitchen, and the Nutshell Library, set to music and sung by Carole King. My boys LOVE it, and they ask for Max and Mickey all the time. It’s relatively short, too.
–The Muppet Movie is another that my boys love. They sing songs from it all the time. It was one of my favorites as a child, but I do recall that the scene where the doctor tries to “fry” Kermit was very scary to me. My boys don’t seem to be phased by it, but it’s probably because they don’t understand it yet. There are some guns, and there are some punching/kicking parts (defensively, but still). On the whole, I don’t think they understand much of the plot, but they LOVE the Muppets, and they love the music, so it gets played a lot. It probably helps that it’s one that I don’t mind watching a lot, too, since it’s one of my personal favorites.
–Fantasia 2000 is another good one. There’s a few sensitivity-provoking scenes, but they are very brief.
–They also enjoy Pixar movies, and for the most part, I’m pretty okay with most of the “violence”/”thematic” elements in these movies. They like Monsters Inc., though there’s a scene in the middle that I skip where the monster scares the little girl on accident. They love Toy Story (1, 2 and 3), and Cars. And they also have DVDs of all the Pixar shorts made so far, and they love both of those, too. Again, they’re pretty neutral theme-wise. Some of them are very boring to the boys (they just don’t “get” Wall-E yet, not even the short one). Anyhow, those “shorts” are great, because you can pick and choose which ones you want to watch, and skip the ones that she doesn’t like or that don’t jive with your personal ethic.
Basically, my boys watch way too much TV these days. It’s cold here, and we’ve all been going through round after round of sickness and traveling a lot, and mama needs her internet time! Hah. TV wise, they love Dinosaur Train, SuperWhy, Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood, The Cat And The Hat, Curious George– basically the entire PBS morning lineup, so DVDs of those shows are also very popular, and ones that don’t bug me too much. Oh, and the musician in you might enjoy Little Einsteins. It introduces classical composers and art in a mostly non-annoying way, that my kids really dig these days. It’s right up their alley, and I kind of enjoy it myself a bit!
Um, I think that’s about all I’ve got! Clearly, we like kids shows in this house!
Thanks, Kate; those are some great ideas!
We just recently watched Pocoyo (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pocoyo), the English version narrated by Stephen Fry. It was cute, not annoying, and very gentle.