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?”