I've only just started to let Ella watch 'older' movies, as she seemed ready for it.
The first one - Willow - was a mistake because it featured trolls. She could't sleep that night and ended up in my bed.
So last night we tried Narnia (the lion, the witch and wardrobe). As expected, she crawled under the doonah whenever she heard the "suspense music" (it was about 35 degrees in the bedroom!). But this time there was another aspect of the film that affected her too. When the sad music played as the kids are on the train after being sent away from London to avoid the dangers of war, she commented: "They are very sad, aren't they? It's a bit of a sad movie, isn't it?" Then - when the little girl starts crying because her siblings won't believe her when she tells them about Narnia:
Ella - [crying] This film makes me cry!
Me - Oh sweetie, it's ok to feel sad because of a movie. It's not a bad thing. Look, she stopped crying now and everything is fine.
She definitely doesn't lack empathy.
2 comments:
Oh movies are so hard to find for little ones (that we can enjoy) that don't generate a huge negative response, I found.
I think it is part of desensitising our kids, the way they have the tension build and the baddies really scary. We had to walk out of Finding Nemo at her age (the fishtank filter scene), and Brother Bear wasn't much better!
Mind you, her first "bigscreen movie" experience - Piglet's Big Movie - made her cry for days.
Ella seems to already have been desensitised quite a bit to animated violence and scariness. Though we still skip the mother-eating-Baracuda scene in finding Nemo. We watched the 2nd part of Narnia last night and it does worry me that she didn't even blink during the battle scene. But I do hope she won't lose the urge to cry with sad scenes!
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