The Green Eye Nightmare

Kids TV and movies have come a long way from when I was kid.  I remember the days of “School House Rock” and “Fat Albert”.  I used to love those shows!

Just recently, we were watching “Arthur” on PBS and the episode had something to do with Lance Armstrong and then the next thing I know they are talking about cancer and I’m like CANCER!  So I just shut it off.  I wasn’t ready for that with a 4-year-old.

As for movies… Myles has seen a few like “Cars”, “Toy Story” and “Thomas the Train”.  Then one day recently I made the MISTAKE of branching out and letting Myles watch the movie “Monsters vs. Aliens”.I thought it couldn’t be that bad and we watched it together.  BIG MISTAKE!!! Well, there’s one part in the movie that shows a monster with a green eye and that’s when I realized Myles was getting a little scared and turned it off.  We probably watched about 40 minutes.  So that night he went to bed and woke up at 2 o’clock in the morning talking about how the “green eye” took him out of his bed.  I thought to myself nice going Mom!  Now I was up in the middle of the night explaining that the green eye isn’t real and to dream about rainbows, puppies and unicorns.

The next day Myles told me he liked “Monsters vs. Aliens” and wanted to watch it again.  I was like what? But you said the “green eye” scared you.  Myles told me he wanted to see it again.  I wasn’t falling for it and said no way.  I’m not going to be up in the middle of the night talking about the “green eye”.  I deleted the movie from DVR and he can watch it again when he’s 12.  And, believe it or not he still talks about that dog gone “green eye”.

Lessons learned:  #1. Little kids are fickle.  #2.  I won’t let my 4 year old watch a movie he’s not ready for or it will cause me to lose sleep.  #3. Stick to what we know best… “Thomas the Train” movies or even better we’ll just read a book!