Two Reasons Why the Descendants Movies were a Yes for My Five Year Old
I, like most moms of little kids, am very wary about the tv shows and movies we watch with our kids. Usually, our screen time involves PBS Kids or Bluey or Doc McStuffins on Disney+. One morning, I walked into the living room to find my husband and my (then) 4 year old watching Descendants on Disney+. I was somewhat familiar with it because my teenage students are obsessed with the soundtrack to those movies, but I immediately got upset that he would show our 4 year old something I assumed was too mature for her. We turned it off, and I didn’t think anything of it until the next time my students wanted to listen to the soundtrack while we worked on a project. I asked them more about the movies, and then decided to give it a watch with my now 5 year old thinking if anything wasn’t appropriate or could be scary, I’d turn it off. I wasn’t expecting the movie (and all the sequels) to become a staple in our movie line-up and our music playlist, but now they are.
The lessons are easy for younger kids to understand
If you’re not familiar with these movies, the general premise follows kids of fairytale villains as they figure out their place as either good or evil in their land (The Isle of the Lost) or the land of the fairytale heroes (Auradon). In the first movie, the central character of the four main kids, Mal – daughter of Maleficent, must decide whether to follow her mother’s footsteps and steal a magic wand that would free all of the villains or choose to do good and see herself separate from her mom’s reputation. The storyline is easy to follow and easy to talk through with a five year old. My daughter could articulate to me that Mal choose to do what she thought was right (or she made a green choice as my girl said) and that it was better to be a hero than a villain. Just the basic understanding of this concept has made many other discussions with my five year old, like stranger danger and the importance of not making choices that hurt other people, possible.
These movies opened a door to the Disney classics I grew up with.
Disney movies have changed so much over time. I’ve been so disappointed that the classics I grew up watching on VHS tape are now movies that my small kids didn’t want to watch. When my oldest was really little, I tried to introduce her to Cinderella and Snow White, but she didn’t find them as interesting as Frozen or Moana. Even though I love the Frozen movies, I was so sad that I couldn’t spark an interest for the classics for her since these movies are such icons of Disney animation and are much calmer to watch than some more current movies. Once we watched the first Descendants movie a second time, my daughter started expressing an interest in the backstories of the movie character’s parents. We watched Sleeping Beauty so she could understand who Maleficent is since she is the mother of her favorite Descendants character. Since my daughter discovered the Descendants movies, we’ve watched Cinderella, Snow White, The Little Mermaid, Sleeping Beauty, and Aladdin; all movies that were favorites of my childhood but never really clicked with my daughter when we tried to watch them together. The calmer, slower classics that are good for my high-energy child are now ones she enjoys and we spend time watching together when we need an little bit of time to calm down.
Without encouragement and reassurance from my teenage students, I would never have considered letting my younger child watch the Descendants movies. But I’ve found that these movies, like most of the Disney channel original movies I grew up on, are actually good for younger kids to watch with us. If you have a kid who’s into fairy tales or Disney princesses (or the villains), give Descendants a try. You may be pleasantly surprised by the other Disney experiences these movies can spark.
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