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.