Amateur Parenting Mistake

A month or so ago I made the mistake of letting Tenley watch the remake of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. All was going along fine until we got to the part where the squirrels tossed Veruca Salt into the trash bin and then Tenley lost it. She was crying uncontrollably and was still sniffling at the end when we saw Veruca and her daddy come out of the factory.

Apparently, I didn’t learn because tonight I made the same mistake with E.T. I was 14 when I saw E.T. and they say that kids are more mature these days so I figured 25 years have gone by so that ought to translate so a 3 year old could see this movie.

Again, all was fine. She laughed at E.T. and the kids. She pronounced the Gov’t Men as being “Bad” and none of it seemed to bother her until E.T. up and died. You would have thought that she knew him personally with the way she was crying. This time she was truly inconsolable. She didn’t care that E.T. came back to life and she didn’t care that he was going home to be with his family. As far as she was concerned the movie ended when E.T. died.

I finally had to distract her with a sucker and Buzz Lightyear. The crying stopped, the sucker was eaten and 30 mins later she says, “But I want to watch E.T. again”! Oh no, I am not falling for that again, let’s watch Snakes on a Plane instead. (That’s a whole other story!)