My opinion of The Lego Movie is that it got out of control in the very best way possible. I saw it on opening day with my guys because we’re big Lego fans in our house. We all three enjoyed it. You can read my full review of the movie over at Life & Liberty by clicking Emmet’s orange suit in the photo above.
Archive for the ‘Family’ Category
15 Feb
Just How Awesome is The Lego Movie?
4 Feb
Angry Mom?
“The times I feel irritated are really inconvenient times to be a mom. Those are the times I tend to react poorly to even the most innocent of my son’s behaviors. And I worry, am I the angry mom who is impossible to please? Am I setting up my kid for years of self-destructive self-talk?”
I’m at Life & Liberty today trying to work out some of this about Anger and Parenting. Please click the thermal photo above and surf you way over to Life & Liberty to read the rest of my thoughts on this issue.
27 Jan
Learn from Disney’s Frozen about Using Power for Good
Queen Elsa’s empowerment in Frozen shows us three conditions that facilitate being able to harness our powers and abilities for good. First, we need freedom from oppressive people and situations. Second we need healthy, loving, outward focus. And third, we need the support of others who truly care about our best interests. I’ll describe how each of these conditions helped Elsa and how they can help us too…
Read the rest of this essay at Life & Liberty to find out what I have to say about what Frozen can teach us about using our powers and abilities for good. Click the photo above to read the essay.
24 Jan
Disney’s Frozen and My Rant about the ‘Rents (Spoiler)
The parents in Frozen inadvertently fueled the monstrous side of their daughter’s powers.
So, I’m pretty sure I’ve got a whole book in me about Disney’s Frozen because I like it so much and it really gets me thinking. I’m writing a pair of essays for Life & Liberty about what the movie can teach us about the use and misuse of power, but I wanted to insert this between those essays to expand on a problem I have with the parents in that movie.
*SPOILER ALERT* This essay discusses major plot points of the movie including surprising twists to the story. If you have not seen the movie and do not want to know how the story unfolds, do not read this essay.
In my first Frozen essay, Disney’s Frozen and the Misuse of Power, I wrote the following about the role that fear plays in how the main character misuses her powers:
As we get to know Queen Elsa, we see that she has a great struggle within herself that is grounded in fear. Her particular fear is that she will hurt someone with her powers just like when she accidentally struck her sister, Anna, with them in when they were children.
In all fairness, the wacky troll that heals Anna and the girls’ parents feed right into Elsa’s fears. The troll erases Anna’s memories of Elsa’s magic and warns Elsa that fear will make her powers more dangerous. The parents then keep Elsa away from other people—including Anna—as much as possible.
The more Elsa tries to conceal and control her powers, the more afraid she becomes and the more of a threat her powers present. So primal is her fear, that it manifests violently against others—including her beloved sister—in order to protect them from her.
I mentioned the parents in passing, but the truth is that they played a significant negative role in their daughters’ lives by keeping them apart, isolating Elsa, and hiding the truth from Anna.
I suppose it makes a more compelling story to have the girls grow up with this gulf between them. It makes it more dramatic when Anna–who has been shut out by Elsa for so long–stands between Elsa and the sword intended for her.
Locked Away
Storytelling devices aside, it’s pretty terrible to lock a girl away just because of one mishap with her powers.
As we see early on, Elsa’s powers can be used to create the most amazing, fun and beautiful playscapes. She and Anna enjoy the winter wonderland that she creates in the castle ballroom. The accident in which Anna gets struck by Elsa’s powers was because Anna was so absorbed in her enjoyment of her sister’s creations that she misjudged a jump from one snowy peak. It was only in trying to give Anna a safe landing place that Elsa accidentally struck her sister with her powers.
There was no malicious intent in Elsa’s actions. She was not some monster, she was a young girl with an extraordinary gift that accidentally got out of control once.
I understand that the parents were concerned for Anna’s safety. And they were concerned for the safety of their kingdom. I get that, I really do.
But there had to have been a better way. There just had to have been.
I’m not a perfect parent, but I do make a point to honor my kid for who he is. And I try to encourage his best gifts rather than squash his potential at the first sign of struggle.
The obvious key to Elsa harnessing her powers for good was the emotional support she received from Anna and others at the end of the movie. What if the parents had been giving that kind of support all along?
See, to me, that’s a big part of a parent’s job. As kids discover the range of their capabilities, parents are in a unique position to help their kids learn appropriate applications of their skills. Kids can live more fully into the positive & appropriate applications of their skills when parents come alongside them and allow them to practice using them.
I recognize that practice can be messy. There will be risks, missed marks, and set-backs. These are hard, but the best skills are worth honing for the good they can bring to our world.
But Elsa’s parents didn’t allow her to practice her powers. They decided for her that she shouldn’t because they assessed that the risks of her using them were too great. By imposing strict control on her and isolating her they seemed to think they could eliminate the risks associated with her powers.
At Risk
Risk-elimination, no matter how well-intentioned, is as destructive as it is naive. We can never eliminate all risks and to try to eliminate risks is only to introduce different risks.
People are not meant to live isolated lives of fear. We are given gifts and skills to be used for the good of others. When people don’t get to use their gifts then they are at risk for shame, self-loathing, and depression because of the belief that their skills are bad. And when our abilities are not harnessed and guided for good, then the risks get exponentially greater when our abilities manifest in negative or destructive ways.
And so, by trying to eliminate the risks of Elsa using her powers, the parents in Frozen made the situation worse. Elsa hated herself and her abilities and no matter how hard she tried to stop using her powers, they could not be contained. And not having practiced positive applications of her powers in a loving environment, she did not have the emotional resources to direct them for good.
On top of that, their deception of Anna came with additional risks. Of course, there was the obvious risk of Anna losing her favorite playmate. But beyond that, and I want to tread carefully here because I would not want to crush the spirit of a dear soul like Anna, but the parents never dealt with the risky behavior of Anna that led up to the accident with Elsa’s powers.
Anna was a free spirit and we love that about her. Nonetheless, learning to look before she leapt could have served her well in life. She loved and trusted easily which are admirable qualities, to be sure. But instead of helping her learn to manage the risks of her approach to life, the parents enabled her to remain oblivious to the dangers they posed.
And the risks of Anna’s approach to life were great. Let us not forget that the man who tried to kill Elsa was the man with whom Anna had jumped into engagement after singing and dancing with him for just a few hours. It was not Anna’s fault that Hans was a bad guy, but she was responsible for putting in charge of the kingdom a man she barely knew.
Of course, we know how the story ends and that Anna’s power of love saves the day. So, like I say, I wouldn’t want to squelch this power of Anna’s! But the parents could have been better resources for her as a child by allowing her to see the risks involved in loving and trusting so fully and so readily.
As I say, I realize that the situation the parents created sets up a great story. And this is only fiction. But those parents just bug me.
5 Jan
Why I Never Threaten, “Wait Until Your Father Gets Home!”
There’s this archetypal scene in stay-at-home-mother lore in which the child misbehaves and the mom, at her wit’s end, says, “Just wait until your father gets home!” I want to go on record as never having uttered this threat and I don’t plan to start. Let me tell you why.
1. It wouldn’t work
First of all, it hasn’t taken my 9 year old long to figure out that his dad is the softie.
Want to stay up late? Remind dad of something he promised to do with you today but hasn’t done yet.
Want a new toy? Ask dad to take you to the store, “just to work on a wish list.”
More often than not, I’m the stricter parent. “Go to bed” means “now” in my way of thinking. And I see right through that “wish list” ploy.
Don’t get me wrong, my husband doesn’t let our son run amok, but in a side-by-side comparison he is more lenient than I am most of the time.
So, if I were to try that “wait until your father gets home” bit on my son, it would backfire. My son would see it for the empty threat it would be and it simply wouldn’t work.
2. I wouldn’t want to be in the kind of marriage/family where it did work
Not only am I resigned to the fact that this kind of threat wouldn’t work, but I am also glad because I don’t want my kid to fear his father or disrespect me.
I want my husband and son to have a healthy father-son bond. This would be impeded if my husband was someone who instilled fear in my child’s little heart.
When I think what “wait until your father gets home” might imply, I shudder at the thought. The threat seems to imply a heavy-handed father who shames, yells at, or even beats the child to get compliance.
I do not want to be married to a man who promotes hostility and fear in the home. I purposefully chose to marry a man who is tender-hearted and nurturing because that is the tone I want in our home.
Furthermore, abdicating discipline of my own child would undermine me as a parent. Especially since I am the one who is on the scene most of the day, I need to be able to set and maintain appropriate boundaries with my son.
If I could not personally enforce standards of discipline, I would be suggesting to my son that I don’t know how to make rules or that my rules are not important. I would be opening myself to disrespect from my child and ultimately this could lead to greater chaos and misbehavior over time.
I believe that whichever parent is on the scene when misbehavior occurs needs to be able to handle it directly. It is not fair to either my husband or myself for us to put discipline off on the other parent.
3. I don’t want to be the kind of parent who makes threats
Last, but certainly not least, I believe that parental threats are a form of aggression and I seek to avoid them. Whether they are empty threats or ones that have real “teeth” to them, any kind of threat is an aggressive form of communication.
When there are so many other, more affirming ways to communicate with my child about my expectations, I’d rather use those. I want to promote a positive atmosphere to encourage my son to make better choices in life.
I’m not perfect. I have admitted in the past that I yell more than I’d like. And, if I’m honest, subtle threats probably make their way into my communication with my son more than I intend.
Aggressive communication is the wide path that is easy to go down, but it leads to destruction. The narrow path of loving and nurturing forms of discipline is harder to stick to, but it leads to life. (For more on this theme, see Matthew 7:12-14.)
So, in addition to all the reasons not to use dad as a threat, I don’t even want threats to be part of how I discipline my child. I pray for the wisdom and grace to be the kind of parent who doesn’t rely on threats for correction.
At home with my approach
Overall, we have a really positive home life where each person is loved and respected. I was always raised in a home where I was respected as a child and I want to offer the same to my kid. I do expect compliance to certain rules and standards in the home, but I will not threaten my kid with his own father. There are lots of positive ways to maintain order in our home and I’m finding them to work quite well.
For a good, basic primer on the parenting philosophy I use, I recommend Positive Discipline by Jane Nelsen. (Click the title to see this recommendation in my Amazon store at Life & Liberty. Purchases you make there will help support this online magazine where I am a contributor.)
Jennifer Clark Tinker 