Things I want my kids to know

It’s the Summer holidays, so we have been in the car a lot recently. One of the things I like about our road trips is listening to some of our favourite tunes, and on one of these trips I made a playlist of some of the top (in my view) Disney songs.

For my kids, these songs are just banging tunes. For me, the older I get, the more meaning I find in films and songs I previously took on a purely surface level. So, I wanted to share a few that tend to strike me (read – make me cry), and what it is that gets me.

Part of your world - The Little Mermaid

I mean, it’s the best song, isn’t it. I had to get this one in somewhere.

For me, the bit that always gets me here is the part where she sings about being ready to stand. It makes me think about my kids one day feeling ready to stand on their own two feet and to strike out on their own (and then I think about that bit at the end of the film where her dad accepts that she wants to go and just says out loud how much he is going to miss her, and I am immediately in pieces while the rest of the clan are happily singing along in the back).

I don’t think I thought much about how my parents would feel about me striking out on my own. I knew I felt nervous and a bit sad, but it isn’t the same. The more I think about it from a parent’s perspective though, the more I think of it as an incredible thing to do: to love your children so much that you let them do what is right for them, even if it is painful for you.

Surface Pressure – Encanto

This is such a good one. Sung by Luisa, the oldest sister.

This one, for me, is all about a pattern I see so much in my 1:1 work: being the responsible one. The strong one. The one who deals with the difficult problems, who is there to carry the things that other people can’t. The one who everyone else depends on, to the degree that actually they take them for granted.

It talks so well about the feeling of pressure that this can lead to, the tension growing bit by bit, and how really all Luisa wants is a break. A break from the pressure of expectation, from the relentless demand and workload, but that she doesn’t know how to do it, because really, she doesn’t know anything else, and she doesn’t know who she is if she isn’t serving others.

How Far I’ll go – Reprise - Moana

This one comes when Moana is having a bit of a crisis of confidence and isn’t sure what to do. For me, the bit that always gets to me is the part where she sings about her grandmother.

She sings about carrying her grandmother with her in her heart, and that this helps her to know who she is and what she is capable of.

Sometimes as an adult I am not sure what to do. Sometimes I don’t know if what I am doing is right, or good enough, or what the next step should be, and sometimes that can feel scary. Sometimes I get wrapped up in feeling that as an adult, I should know what to do and I shouldn’t have to rely upon other people or what others think, but when I take a step back, I actually don’t think that is fair or helpful.

I am fortunate enough to have had adults in my life who have shown me love and appreciation, in many different forms. People who believed in me, who thought I was nice, or clever, or who just showed me that I was worth something. When I spend some time remembering what that feels like, it’s a little easier to feel solid in myself.

Why wouldn’t you want to hold on to that?

As my kids grow, I hope that they can have that same feeling. I hope that they experience me as someone who believes in them and thinks of them as wonderful and worthy of love. When they are out in the world on their own, I hope they know that those things will always be true, even if I might not be there to tell them.

That’s what this one makes me think about.

No wonder I can’t get through it without a tear or two.

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Thanks for reading. Until next week,

Ted

P.S. To be fair, I cry at all the kids films. Even Paw Patrol: The Mighty Movie, when Skye realises that she might be little on the outside, but she's big on the inside.