Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Age or Ability Specific Forums Pre-school videos/movies for the sensitive preschooler

Hi,

I was wondering if anyone has any suggestions for videos for the preschool age child who is very sensitive to suspense and scary bits. Seems like 90% of movies we try we have to turn off. Babe, Nemo, Winnie the Pooh, and the first Land Before Time movie are the only ones we've found over the last year that are okay for DS3 and even they have panicked moments for him. But 101 Dalmations, Oliver & Company, subsequent Land Before Times, all too scary. IMAX dinosaur movie in the dark, really poor judgement on my part.

We mainly watch nature documentaries, to the point he sounds like a walking documentary "And here we see the northern...". I'm sure he'd love to watch a movie or two if I could just find ones that don't scare him.

Polly

I'll have to think about this one since most of Disney's movies have scary parts in them.

How about "Meet the Robinsons" or maybe even "Kong Fu Panda"? Though even Kong Fu might be scary but those parts are offset by the clumsy panda. "Milo and Otis" and/or "Lady and the Tramp" are some older/classics but I don't think they are necessarily scary.

Hi Polly
We are in the same boat with DS 4.5. He saw curious George and Aladdin over the summer at camp and pronounced them not scary. I really wanted to do toy story and this summers despicable me but both have parts he couldn't do. We just do PBS kids and old school seasame street. We even have the problem with books before bed if they are too adventurous. I don't think he's missing out to much but it would be nice. Avoid Disney at all costs there is almost always something!!!

DeHe

DS was like this when he was younger too, only Nemo and Winnie the Pooh were both terrifying (Falling out of a tree and getting stuck in a hole were scary things for a 3 year old!)
We stuck to episodes of television shows. He loved Poko at that age.

Hi, Polly,

Some my quite-sensitive lads have liked:

-The Secret of Roan Inish
-The Story of the Weeping Camel
-Wallace and Gromit (the shorts, not the full-length film, which was too scary)
-Ingmar Bergman's version of Mozart's Magic Flute
-Robert Altman's Popeye
-Microcosmos (French insect movie)
-opera films (La Cenerentola, Il Barbiere di Siviglia, etc.)
-operetta films (Pirates of Penzance, The Gondoliers, Iolanthe, HMS Pinafore, etc.)
-some Shakespeare (the films of staged versions have worked better here than the dramatizations--they don't really want to see a boat actually sink at the beginning of Twelfth Night, for instance)
-The Way Things Work videos (re: pressure, heat, etc.)

Apart from those, we've had to go old: Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, The Marx Brothers, Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, Gene Kelly, the Nicholas Brothers, etc. Really, Hollywood musicals before about 1960 are ideal kid fare--pretty innocent, lots of good music, not usually too much that could be construed as scary or truly suspenseful...

Our other method for preventing being overwhelmed watching even these gentle films has been a) always to watch things together, and b) to watch no more than 30 minutes at one sitting.

Hope that helps a bit!

peace
minnie

PS--Just thought of one more, but we have to start this one a few minutes in--Carroll Ballard's Black Stallion is lovely, but we have to start after the shipwreck (actually, we can't start Babe right at the beginning, either--have to wait until Babe is at the fair). Ballard also made a lovely film called Duma, but you might want to wait a year or two on that one.

My DS5 was one of those sensitive kids too. I also made the mistake of the IMAX dinosaur movie. ugh!

He liked Wall-E, although in one scene Eve shoots when she doesn't know who Wall-E is yet. That's it for that.
The movie "Cars" - his still favorite movie - was scary during the Frank the harvester/tractor-tipping scene. We fast-forwarded through that for a year; but the rest wasn't scary. "Stupid" and "moron" are used a few times though. We have explained that Frank the harvester was just protecting the tractors, and he gets it now; but we didn't force him to watch the scary parts. He'd run out of the room, say fast forward, and ask us to tell him when it was done.

There are a few Thomas full-length movies that he liked. You could try Bob the Builder dvd's.

We had tons of Backyardigan videos, Dora videos (although he didn't like the witch - but not because she was scary, but because she was mean). He was sensitive to this, but not scared.
He loved the Leafrog videos at 3. The Curious George movie was not scary, but they call the man with the yellow hat a "moron" or "idiot" or something once just after he gets his yellow clothes.

That's all I have for you. It will get better. Hugs!

I thought of something else--my kids like the Jeeves and Wooster videos (they've read several of the books already); absolutely no scariness there....unless you count Sir Roderick Spode! :-)

mm

sesame st's 'follow that bird' seemed ok (good movie/songs, don't recall any very scary stuff, Bird gets lost but he's not really aware of it most of the time)
thomas the tank engine vids were a big fav with ds, there is one scary halloween one, so skip that one (has a dragon). They are narrated by Ringo Starr, incidentally.

My DS is VERY sensitive too. When he was a baby we were watching Chicken Little and he started sobbing over the part where Chicken Little has his big discussion with his Dad. I should have known he was a bit different then!

He just turned 5 and can't really watch any Disney movies either. He pretty much doesn't want to watch anything because he isn't sure about them. We did get him to see Toy Story 3 and he did pretty well. The end was a bit scary but, he sat on my lap and did ok. That was his one and only trip to the movie theater.
He does much better with Sprout/Nickelodeon/Disney Channel stuff and the longer shows made from those like the Thomas DVDs etc.
Nature stuff we have a hard time with too. He gets quite upset about animals eating other animals.

My son loves the Disney/Pixar movie CARS and though, as someone already mentioned, the tractor tipping scene is a little scary. But you can easily fast-forward through that and the movie si otherwise non-scary and a great one to watch again and again and again! Super Why and Thomas the Train are also good ones for the sensitive kids.