Childhood

Childhood is not the idyllic time that adults sometimes want to believe it was or should be. At moments, childhood is difficult. While children do not have the responsibilities and troubles of adults, they nonetheless are not free of worries, confusion, doubts, fears, or obligations. They wonder about things and become aware of troubling realities that they see around them. They can have self-doubts, feel misunderstood, or think they don’t fit in. A child’s life is often challenged by real difficulties: Dealing with a difficult teach or feeling discouraged about school work, worrying about what they see on television, coping with a bully, distressed about conflicts, troubled by a parents’ strained relationship, and all the other things that can make life difficult. The truth is that parents cannot protect children from these realities and to a certain degree they need not. To a certain degree. Part of being an adult is learning from childhood experiences how to deal with disappointment and stress. When the difficulties become too great and adults do not properly intervene, the consequences can be seen later in adulthood problems and insecurities.

The Films

A LITTLE PRINCESS Children who have never been told they are special, nor treated as valued, often have insecurities and grow up to become troubled and even angry people. The theme in this movie is that all girls are little princesses, i.e, persons of worth and prominence. The film is an affirmation of the importance to every child of love and the need to be treasured. While the story is revealing about this and about the issues of jealousy, kindness, and the power of imagination, this is a film that can be experienced purely on an emotional level. A Little Princess is especially uplifting to women who were abused as children and need affirmation of their value. 1995.
Warner Home Video
Rated G by M.P.A.A.



FORBIDDEN GAMES  In war, children become victims of the same dangers and traumas as adults, although children are much less able to deal with them. Children depend upon adults to help them cope, survive, and stay out of harm’s way. Too often the realities of war are so disturbing or the burdens on the adults are so great that the needs of the children go unmet. The children scramble in an attempt to stay out of peril, often looking to each other for support, or sometimes they slip into private inner worlds to avoid the disturbing realities around them. Forbidden Games is a French movie from the early fifties that shows what happens to a child whose world is shattered by combat during World War II. Although the film is over forty years old, it has neither lost its impact nor significance. It reveals of the psychological plight children suffer when they are caught in the devastating reality of war. The film follows a young girl, Paulette, who is orphaned and lost in the chaos of battle. She is given shelter by a family of farmers who seems unaffected by the war as they go through their chores and are engaged in the farmer’s age old struggle to survive. While the family gives Paulette a place to live, they seem oblivious to how the war has marked her. Maybe their own experiences, irrespective of how hard they are, give them no understanding that Paulette is seriously troubled. It is only their son, a boy a little older than Paulette, who seems to notice. But he is only a child himself. Few films have as effectively captured the powerlessness that children feel and the disturbing fact that adults can sometimes be completely insensitive to the emotional needs of children.
Embassy Home Entertainment.
French with English subtitles.
Not rated.

HOPE AND GLORY  This is also a movie about children whose lives are upset by a war but in contrast to the adults in Forbidden Games there are adults in this film who are sensitive to how the horror of war is impacting the children and they successfully respond to the children’s needs. We see how a father, before he goes off to the army, empowers his son by teaching the boy the secret of a cricket toss. We witness a mother’s struggle to physically and emotionally keep her children safe during the night bombings of the neighborhood. We watch as children adjust to what has happened to their community and to the people who have had the misfortune or loosing their homes or even a family member. We also see how the family takes charge when they realize that their son is becoming a ruffian. Hope and Glory deals with a troubling reality but shows tht people can and need to remember their children while they themselves are attempting to cope with difficult realities. 1987
Columbia TriStar Studios
Rated PG-13 by M.P.A.A.

FAIRYTALE: A TRUE STORY Children have wonderful imaginations. They can create worlds of their own out of the simplest play things. This ability is important because through pretend children mentally grow and develop mastery of their worlds. When children live with difficult or troubling realities, their fantasy life can become an escape, a way of protecting themselves from something that is too scary or painful to deal with. The fantasy can become so real to the child, that she insists that it is not pretend. This movie is the dramatisation of a real event that occurred in England during World War I. Two young girls, one whose father was missing in action, snapped photographs of what many adults concluded were pictures of real fairies. This created a serious controversy and debate amongst a number of authorities who investigated the matter, including Houdini and Sir Arthur Colan Doyle, creater of Sherlock Holmes. When questioned, the young girls insisted that these snap shots were of real fairies, not the result of some photographic trickery. The children were sincere and had nothing to gain from a hoax. In watching this film, remember that much of what happens in this movie we see from the children’s point of view. We also see the fairies, which appear incredibly real. If you think of what you see as the world through the children’s eyes, you can get a closer sense (and reminder) of what the world looks like to a child and how much more real "pretend" can be. 1997
Paramount
Rated PG by M.P.A.A.

SECRET GARDEN This is the story about a girl who has loses her parents in an earthquake, is sent to live with a relative who has no time for her, and eventually finds a way to make a special place for herself and her friends in an otherwise indifferent household. She is not a perfect little girl. In fact, she tends to be a rebellious person who hides her personal pain by keeping up a haughty front. She is not unlike many children who have had unhappy experiences and have felt (or been) unloved. Regardless, she attempts to find acceptance and goes about helping someone she sees as worse off than she. Only at the end of this movie does she speak out and let others know what is missing in her life and what she so deeply needs. 1993.
Warner Home Video
Rated G

See Also:

NIGHT OF THE HUNTER
SLING BLADE
TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD


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