Lessons From Disney: Talking to Your Kids About Positive Thinking

I wrote some blog posts for another site. Those blogs are being taken down, but because I worked hard on the pieces, I'm keeping them anyway 

Today’s Lesson: The Power of Positive Thinking
Materials:

• Movie: Pollyanna
• A Smile
• Glad Game
• Rainbow Maker

Pollyanna: a person characterized by irrepressible optimism and a tendency to find good in everything. (Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary)
In this day, when cynicism is considered hip and cool, why is it that those who have an optimistic outlook are considered silly, foolish or square?
That is the dilemma facing Pollyanna Whittier.
In 1960, the Walt Disney Studios released the live-action family film Pollyanna, which was actress Hayley Mills’ first film role. The story, based on the 1931 novel by Eleanor Porter, is about an orphan who comes to live with her wealthy aunt (Jane Wyman) and changes the views of the townspeople.
In the film, Pollyanna, whose parents recently died, is sent to Harrington – the town named for her grandfather – which is “run” by her Aunt Polly.
Pollyanna’s hallmark is playing “The Glad Game” – as the child of missionaries, she never had a doll, but her father taught her to the finest points of the things she did have. (Even not-pleasant objects, like crutches, could become positive, i.e. because she didn’t need them.) She introduces the townspeople to the  “The Glad Game,” by taking something unpleasant and turning it into something happy.

  We looked for the good in them, and we found it, didn't we?

For example, the staff at her aunt’s house hate Sundays because of the fire and brimstone sermons at church – but Pollyanna reminds them that, once the sermon is over, “you will never be any farther from next Sunday’s sermon than you are right now.” It turns out the sermons are “suggested topics” from Aunt Polly to Reverend Ford.
              Pollyanna: Nancy, are you and George gonna get married?
              Nancy: We hope to, someday.
              Pollyanna: Oh, I am glad. I think everyone should be married. And maybe, when you do get married, Aunt Polly will see how happy it makes you, she'll be very glad to get married herself, then.
              Angelica: Glad this, glad that. Do you have to be glad about everything? What's the matter with you, anyway?
              Nancy: Oh, lay off her, Angie. She's not hurting you.
She is also given the small attic room at her aunt’s house, rather than one of the larger unoccupied bedrooms:
            Angelica: Stuffy in here. Not much of a room, is it?
            Pollyanna: But it's my own, anyway. I'm glad of that. Ooh, and the bed's soft! And it's got a lovely window.

Over the course of the film Pollyanna spreads her optimism around the town. She tries to help rekindle a romance between Aunt Polly and Dr. Chilton, a childhood sweetheart who had left town years before. She befriends an angry recluse Mr. Pendergast (Adolphe Menjou), accusing him of not wanting to share the “rainbow-makers” in his home (prisms hanging from a lamp shade). She meets hypochondriac Mrs. Snow (Agnes Moorhead) and convinces her not to worry about dying and instead to focus on being happy because she is alive.

At the high point of the film, the town bands together, with some last-minute support from Reverend Ford -  who was reminded, thanks to Pollyanna, that “no one can own a church” -  and hosts a carnival to raise money for the dilapidated orphanage (usually Polly would just give them the money).

The event is a success, but a tragic accident later that evening changes everything –for Polly, Pollyanna and the town.

Will Pollyanna be able to play the “Glad Game” when she needs it the most? Have the townspeople – especially Aunt Polly - learned enough positivity from Pollyanna to help her?

In the end, Pollyanna is about more than just a girl who always tends to find the good in everything. If it were that simple, there wouldn’t be a good story to tell. The bigger question is: What is wrong with wanting to find the good in everything? 

Playing the “Glad Game” isn’t easy. Some do it by making lemons out of lemonade, looking at the glass half-full, wearing rose-colored glasses, or always sporting a smile. But there is some good in everyone, and something good that can be found in every situation. It just might take more time than some people are willing to invest. But if you do, the pay-off will be worth it.
As Reverend Ford tells Pollyanna: “We looked for the good in them, and we found it, didn't we?”

Lessons From Disney: Talking to Your Kids About Self-Doubt

I wrote some blog posts for another site. Those blogs are being taken down, but because I worked hard on the pieces, I'm keeping them anyway 

Today’s Lesson: Believing in Yourself
Materials:

• One Movie: "Bedknobs and Broomsticks"
• One Flying Broom
• One Enchanted Bedknob
• Books: “The Isle of Naboombu” and “The Spells of Asteroth”
• One Black Cat Named Cosmic Creepers

To Believe – “to accept something as true, genuine, or real" (Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary)
“Bedknobs and Broomsticks,” starring Angela Lansbury as apprentice witch Eglantine Price, who ends up caring for three orphans in war-time England, flew into theaters in 1971. It was another example of what happened when Disney paired animation and live-action (a la “Song of the South” and “Mary Poppins”).

Eglantine is hoping that a particular spell she is waiting to receive from the Correspondence College of Witchcraft (and its headmaster Emelius Browne, played by David Tomlinson), will help to end the war. However, the spell doesn’t come and when the kids spot her doing some flying, she offers them a spell in exchange for their secrecy.

Too often preteens, teens and even adults fall into the “not believing” trap. It doesn’t take a spell to make a believer out of someone.

The “world famous traveling spell” – which enchants a bedknob and allows the bed to fly – takes them from Pepperidge Eye to London (to find Browne), to the mansion where Browne is staying, to Portobello Road (to find the spell book), to the Isle of Naboombu (to track down the Star of Asteroth medallion) and back to Pepperidge Eye.
Although the film, based on a novel by Ian Flemming, features several songs from Disney Legends the Sherman Brothers, the one that got the Academy Award nomination for Best Original Song was called “The Age of Not Believing.” It is a song Eglantine sings to Charlie – who is 11 going on 12 – when he expresses doubts at the bed (with its magical bedknob) actually working.
One of the stanzas that might stick with you when you hear the song is this one:

When you set aside your childhood heroes
And your dreams are lost upon a shelf
You're at the age of not believing
And worst of all you doubt yourself

Too often preteens, teens and even adults fall into the “not believing” trap. It doesn’t take a spell to make a believer out of someone.

Of course, Charlie does get onto the bed right before it takes off – apparently his fear of cats outweighs his doubtfulness.

Why is it that when we reach a certain age, we let doubt creep in? Would it make us happier if we allowed ourselves to believe that something will happen – rather than discouraging it?
It might not make inanimate objects move – but it could help make the day go better.

Lessions From Disney: Talking to Your Kids About Loyalty

I wrote some blog posts for another site. Those blogs are being taken down, but because I worked hard on the pieces, I'm keeping them anyway

Today’s Lesson: The Price of Loyalty
Materials:

• Movie: Treasure Island
• One Black Spot
• Treasure Map
• Pirate Ship
• Talking Parrot

Loyalty is a virtue to be treasured. And it might be treasure that is worth its weight in gold. But just how far should it go? These are the questions presented in the classic novel by Robert Louis Stevenson, Treasure Island.
It’s a wonderful book if your kid is old enough to read, but it’s also a great film for younger ones and movie lovers in general. The film starring Bobby Driscol as Jim Hawkins and Robert Newton as the one-legged pirate of all pirates, Long John Silver, sailed into theaters in 1950. It was the Walt Disney Studios’ first completely live-action film and the first screen version of Treasure Island made in color.
In the film, young Jim Hawkins gets pulled into the world of piracy when a sea captain named Billy Bones dies at the Hawkins family inn after being presented with a black spot. Right before dying, Bones gives Hawkins a map to the legendary treasure of Captain Flint and warns him about a one-legged man.
Jim runs from the inn and gives the map to Squire Trewlany and Doctor Livesy, who make plans to head out to sea onboard Captain Smollet’s Hispanola, with Jim as cabin boy. Trewlany hires a sea cook – with one leg, Jim notices. It is, of course, Long John Silver, who hires the remainder of the crew made up of his fellow pirates. Silver has his own reasons for coming aboard the Hispanola: He wants the treasure for himself. Silver befriends Jim, also for reasons that aren’t entirely clear: Is he using Jim, or does he genuinely like him?

Was Jim so desperate for a friend that he was willing to side with a pirate to get that friendship?

Onboard, when Jim overhears Silver planning mutiny he is told to keep being friends with Silver, so he can learn more.
“Stay friends with him?” Jim says warily. “Yes sir, I’ll stay friends with him.”
Jim’s loyalty to both sides becomes increasingly difficult and, while maintaining loyalty to Smollet, he still doesn’t want anything to happen to Silver. As cutthroat as Silver is, he really has a friendship with young Jim. When the ship makes its way to “treasure island,” and battle lines are drawn, Jim is given the map and told by the doctor to use it to save his life if he needs to.
When Jim is stabbed in the arm during the fighting, Silver expresses genuine concern (after taking the map from him). He keeps the other pirates from attacking Jim and says he is “taking care of him proper.” He waves the white flag to bring the doctor to the fort, telling the men he will trade Jim for the map (they don’t know he already has it). And he parlays with the doctor, telling him: “You could cut my good leg off before I lay a finger on [Jim].”
When the doctor comes to rescue Jim, Jim says he can’t leave because he gave “Long John” his word.
Now that Silver has the map, will he find the treasure – and, if so, will he get away with it? Will Jim help him or stop him?
Was Jim so desperate for a friend that he was willing to side with a pirate to get that friendship? When loyalties are tested, why are we drawn to one side over the other? Will the lure of friends always win out over the stability of parents?
In the end, Treasure Island is more about a hunt for a treasure, than the treasure itself. It’s about loyalty, friendship and the legacy you hope the leave. And - just like the black spot – once you are marked as a friend (or an enemy), it is a hard label to lose. Ay matey!